DECEMBER 2004 NOTE} If you desire a recent
"Darwin" item you might wish to examine my October 2004
web page (entitled "The
Darwin Project: 1996 to 2004!)" which includes numerous
post-1996 references. Links are also provided to four
"Darwin videos" (wherein I portray Darwin in the first
person) as well as four "Darwin Self-Tests" currently
available on the WWW .

The paper deals with some of the scientific research of
Charles R. Darwin (1809-1882), specifically his monumental 1859
publication entitled On The Origin of Species by Means of
Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the
Struggle for Life. This paper also points out the "human" side
of this most noted of human beings and Darwin's ideas are
presented in the context of his times. Today, Darwin's theory of
"natural selection" is hopefully well known but how did the
culture of his times influence his ideas and the development and
acceptance of his theory? What happened before Darwin published
Origin and what came after his numerous other publications?
Charles Darwin was an extremely important individual for a variety
of reasons: the data he collected, the experiments he conducted,
and the theories he proposed influenced a variety of disciplines,
from anthropology to zoology as well as ecology, geology, and the
general social sciences. His influence continues to be condemned,
supported, and debated after almost 150 years. [168 words]

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF CHARLES R.
DARWIN: 1809-1882

SOME MAJOR INDIVIDUALS
MENTIONED IN THE PAPER
1809-1831: EDUCATION
HIGHLIGHT OF 1831: GETTING ON HMS BEAGLE

THE VOYAGE ON HMS BEAGLE: 1831 TO 1836
THE IN-BETWEEN YEARS: 1836 TO 1858

Charles Robert Darwin was born in the village of Shrewsbury
(England) on February 12, 1809, and he died on April 19, 1882.
Shrewsbury, 160 miles northwest of London and close to the border of
Wales, is approximately 4,000 miles from the United States of America
and on that same day, the 16th President of the United States of
America, Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) was born in Kentucky.

As stated in the Abstract, or Executive Summary above, an attempt
is made in this paper to point out the "human" side of Darwin and he
will be discussed within the context of his times. With that in mind,
it is worth noting that since the "paper" version of this paper was
initially completed and distributed on January 31, 1995, it was
exactly 156 years ago that date (January 31, 1839) that Charles
Darwin had been married to Emma Darwin (née Emma ) for exactly
two days. On January 30, 1839, Mr. and Mrs. Charles R. Darwin moved
into a town house in the Bloomsbury area of London (12 Gower Street)
but January 31, 1839 was not a good day for the newly married couple:
Josiah Wedgwood III was married to Caroline Darwin, the older sister
of Charles Darwin and on December 18, 1838 Sophie Wedgwood was born
to this couple. On January 31, 1839 Darwin's niece died and it has
been written of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Darwin that "there could have
been no sadder end to a happy month, and it clouded their first weeks
together" (Adrian Desmond and James Moore, 1991, Darwin: The Life
of A Tormented Evolutionist, page 280).

Why this "trivial" piece of information at the beginning of a
scholarly paper? Simply to point out that Charles R. Darwin was a
human being, who was born of woman, married a woman, had friends and
relatives and cares and worries, grew old and eventually died. While
his ideas and research may be viewed by some as somewhat unique, he
was just as human as the writer (and reader) of this paper, burdened
with all of the biases and paradoxes of the times and (therefore)
limited by the known (and perhaps more important, unknown)
information of the times. The point is strongly made, and noted
below, that Charles Darwin went beyond the limitations that others
saw and discovered something new: rules for living organisms, or
natural selection. It has been written that "science" or "creativity"
is to "see what everybody else has seen and then think what nobody
has thought." This idea will be discussed further, for Charles R.
Darwin was creative.

When Darwin was in his prime, he was slightly more than six feet
in height, but as the years began to weigh on his bones, he took on a
stoop which became characteristic of his appearance and it made him
look shorter. While a young man, he had a ruddy complexion as well as
a rounded chin and he was beardless, even though he wore his
reddish-brown sideburns down to his jawline. Darwin enjoyed walking,
running, and riding and in his later years he enjoyed having novels
read aloud to him. Darwin like dogs, used snuff all of his life
(writing that he "learnt the habit at Edinburgh" University, in
Scotland ), drank very little wine, and had brown eyes with slight
purple speckles (Nora Barlow, 1958, The Autobiography of Charles
Darwin, page 84). Charles Darwin first grew a beard, as was the
custom, when he was on board HMS Beagle on her
circumnavigation of the globe in 1831-1836 but he shaved the beard
before returning to England. Darwin began to grow his final beard in
1863 in order to avoid the burden of shaving and he also became
entirely bald.

Darwin was one of six children born to Susannah Wedgwood
(1765-1817). He had three older sisters: Marianne (1798-1858),
Caroline (1800-1888), Susanne (1803-1866), as well as a younger one,
Emily Catherine (1810-1866) and an older brother, Erasmus
(1804-1881). Charles Darwin's brother, Erasmus Darwin (named after
their paternal grandfather, the eminent physician Erasmus Darwin
(1731-1802) had a tremendous amount of influence on Charles
Darwin.

When Charles Darwin was 8 years old his mother, Susannah Wedgwood,
died at the age of fifty-two (July 1817). Although he had very little
recollection of her, a colleague of his once stated that he recalled
when Charles Darwin was still a child, Darwin brought a flower to
school, stating that his mother had taught him how "by looking at the
inside of the blossom, the name of the plant could be discovered"
(In Thomas H. Huxley, 1896, Darwiniana Essays, page
254). This was not to suggest that the name was neatly stitched
therein, but that Charles Darwin's mother was teaching him the
rudiments of the Linnaean system of classification. Until 1818 Emily
Catherine and Charles Darwin were educated at home by their older
sister Caroline; then Darwin began to attend a boarding school one
mile from home. In his infancy in Shrewsbury, he had the nickname of
"Babba" and while a young teenager, his brother Erasmus wrote to
young "Bobby." While on the HMS Beagle (when in his 20s), Charles
Darwin was known as "Dear Old Philosopher" to the Officers and was
called the "Flycatcher" by all!

Charles Darwin's father, Robert Waring Darwin (1768-1848), was a
prosperous and prominent physician in Shrewsbury and he did not see
fit to re-marry after his wife's death in 1817. Robert Darwin had the
distinction of being the largest man that Charles Darwin ever
observed: Robert Darwin was some six feet two inches in height, with
a tremendous girth, and the last time he weighed himself he was at
some 360 pounds (or 24 stone in the measurement system of the day).
Robert Darwin, incidentally, continued to gain weight after that time
although it is written that he no longer weighed himself (Gerturde
Himmelfarb, 1959, Darwin And The Darwinian Revolution, page
10).

While healthy as a youth, after his 1831-1836 voyage on HMS
Beagle, Charles Darwin was chronically ill, having contracted
what was eventually termed Chagas Disease. On the 26th of March 1835,
in South America, Darwin was bitten by what has been called "the
Great Black Bug of the Pampas" or Triatoma infestans
[Gavin De Beer, 1964, Charles Darwin: Evolution By Natural
Selection, page 116]. Chagas disease, not diagnosed by the
medical profession until the 20th century, could result, at various
times in migraine, vomiting, lassitude, stomach and heart problems,
flatulance, and (as you can imagine) a feeling of un-wellness
(Stephen J. Goukd , 1982, "In Praise of Charles Darwin" in
Darwin's Legacy: Nobel Conference XVIII Gustavus Adolphus College,
St. Peter, Minnesota, Edited by Charles L. Hamrum, pp. 1-10, page
3; also see John Bowlby, 1990, Charles Darwin: A New Life,
page 6 and pp. 7-14 for a psychosomatic interpretation of Darwin's
illness).

When his father died at the age of eighty-two on November 13,
1848, Charles Darwin was not able to attend his funeral because of
his own ill health [Sir Francis Darwin (1848-1925), Editor, 1950
edition, Charles Darwin's Autobiography: With his Notes and
Letters Depicting the Growth of the Origin Of Species, page
52]. Certain researchers have suggested that Darwin suffered from
psychosomatic problems resulting from problems with his father; my
interpretation, however, is that Darwin was bitten by a bug, infected
by the bug, and he had the heartiest respect for his father who was a
sensitive individual as well as a cautious businessman. Although a
physician, Charles Darwin's father was not "scientific" but he did
have a vision of the universe. One of his golden rules which Charles
Darwin remembered and which Charles Darwin attempted to follow, was
"Never become the friend of anyone whom you cannot respect" (Stanley
E. Hyman, 1963, Darwin For Today, page 338). Such were some of
the words that Charles Darwin remembered from his father.

As Charles Darwin matured, he became independently wealthy and was
able to devote his time and energies, such as they were, to those
questions which he found interesting rather than on a career to
support his family. Upon his father's death, Charles Darwin inherited
approximately 45,000 pounds; this amount, combined with the 13,000
pounds he received from his father upon his marriage in 1839 to his
cousin Emma Wedgwood (1808-1896) and the 5,000 pound dowry that Emma
Wedgwood brought into the marriage, provided Mr. and Mrs. Charles
Darwin with quite a bit of capital at all times. When Charles Darwin
died in 1882, he had nearly quadrupled his inheritance and his estate
was estimated to be approximately 282,000 pounds. This was done by
investments in railroads, for in Darwin's time, railroads developed
over the canal system in the British Isles.

After graduating from Cambridge University in 1831, Charles Darwin
took his trip around the world on HMS Beagle and in 1876, at
the age of sixty-eight, Darwin wrote his Autobiography. In it he
stated that his five-year voyage, over the years of 1831-1836 "has
been by far the most important event of my life and has determined my
whole career (Stanley E. Hyman, 1963, Darwin For Today, page
1) and he also wrote that the Origin of 1859 "is no doubt the
chief work of my life" [Stanley E. Hyman, 1963, Darwin For
Today, page 389]. Darwin was 22 years old in 1831 when HMS
Beagle set out on a scientific exploration across the globe. When
he returned in 1836, Darwin married and he never left England
again.

On November 11, 1838, Charles Darwin proposed to Emma Wedgwood,
the daughter of Josiah Wedgwood II (and granddaughter of Josiah
Wedgwood who established the famous pottery works). Charles Darwin
affectionately called Emma's father "Uncle Jos" since they were
related through his maternal grandfather. Emma had "grey eyes, a
firm, humorous mouth and rich chestnut hair "(Edna Healey, 1986,
Wives Of Fame: Mary Livingstone, Jenny Marx, Emma Darwin, page
136). Earlier in 1838, Emma's older brother Jos had married one of
Charles Darwin's older sisters, and it was their child (Sophie
Wedgwood) that had died three days after Charles Darwin and Emma
Wedgwood were wed. Emma Wedgwood and Charles Darwin were married on
January 29, 1839 and resided in London from that year until 1842.
Living in London provided Charles Darwin with the opportunity to
attend professional meetings and engage in research since the Darwin
home was close to the British Museum. On the 24th of January 1839
Darwin was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and five days later
Emma and he were married.

Their first child William (1839-1914) was born in that capital of
the British Empire (on December 27), an Empire which was to cover
1/3rd of the globe in Queen Victoria's time. (Queen Victoria was the
monarch from 1837 to 1901.) Emma Darwin's next child was Anne
Elizabeth, born on March 2 of 1841, but Annie died on the 23rd of
April 1851 at the age of ten.

Mr. & Mrs. Darwin soon discovered that they detested the city
and Charles Darwin wrote "I long to be settled in pure air, out of
all the dirt, noise, vice & misery of this great wen" (or cyst of
a city) for London was an "odious and smoky town" (Peter Brent, 1981,
Charles Darwin: A Man Of Enlarged Curiosity, page 326 and page
223). Charles Darwin also wrote that the capital of London "suited my
health so badly that we resolved to live in the country, which we
both preferred and have never repented [Sir Francis Darwin
(1848-1925), Editor, 1950 edition, Charles Darwin's Autobiography:
With his Notes and Letters Depicting the Growth of the Origin Of
Species, page 50]." On September 14, 1842, the Darwin family
moved to the village of Down in Kent, sixteen miles southeast of
London. The census of 1841 pointed out that there were 444 residents
of the village of Down in that year and by 1881 (one year before
Charles Darwin's death), the population had swelled to 555.

The Darwin home was spacious and while under-furnished, was
comfortable to raise a family. Their furniture was once described by
their grand-daughter as "ugly in a way, but dignified and plain"
(Julian Huxley and H.B.D. Kettlewell, 1965, Charles Darwin And His
World, page 60). A 20th Century description has been given of the
Darwin home:

"[it] had no profound social or architectural
pretension, but was a square, honest, open-fronted structure,
somewhat bare, with straightforward windows and an intimidating
front door, built of worn, though serviceable brick" (Peter Brent,
1981, Charles Darwin: A Man Of Enlarged Curiosity, page
328).

In an 1842 letter to his sister Catherine, Darwin called the house
at Down somewhat ugly [Charles R. Darwin to Catherin Darwin,
dated July 1842 in More Letters of Charles Darwin: A Record Of His
Work In A Series Of Hitherto Unpublished Letters, Francis Darwin
(Editor), 1903, page 32]. Initially they had two bathrooms, a
study, a dining-room, and ample space to raise a family and work and
think. The house was gradually expanded . At first, they had no
running hot water but they did have two serviceable outhouses! Emma
and Charles Darwin had a loving and caring family. The Darwin home at
Down was situated on 15 acres (with cherry and walnut trees as well
as scotch and silver fir) and Charles Darwin would think and walk and
enjoy the splendor of their grounds.

Emma and Charles Darwin had ten children, but only seven reached
their age of maturity. On September 23, 1842, Mary Eleanor was born
in Down but she died within three weeks on the 10th of October.
Henrietta Emma was born in 1843 (September 25) and died in 1927. The
following information on all of the children of Emma and Charles
Darwin might be interesting: William (1839-1914), Anne (1841-1851),
Mary (1842), Henrietta Emma (1843-1927), George (1845-1912),
Elizabeth (1847-1926), Francis (1848-1925), Leonard (1850-1943),
Horace (1851-1928), and Charles Waring (1856-1858).

Charles R. Darwin was conducting research and writing until the
73rd year of his life and it was during this winter of 1881-1882 that
his heart began to give him problems. While visiting a friend in
London in December 1881, he suffered a mild heart seizure (Walter
Karp, 1968, Charles Darwin And The Origin Of Species, page
149). On the 12th of February 1882, his 73rd birthday, he wrote to a
friend that "my course is nearly run" (Julian Huxley and H.B.D.
Kettlewell, 1965, Charles Darwin And His World, page 126) and
on Wednesday the 19th of April 1882, he had a fatal heart attack and
died.

The remains of Charles R. Darwin are not buried in Down but in the
chapel of St. Faith in Westminster Abbey, London. At his death,
twenty Members of Parliament immediately requested of the Dean of
Westminster that Darwin be buried in the Abbey. A four-horse funeral
carriage (accompanied by Francis, Leonard, and Horace Darwin) made
the 16 mile journey to London on the 25th of April 1882. If one
considers how Darwin had been verbally attacked by certain clergy
during his lifetime it may seem unusual that he is buried in the
holiest-of-holy places in the British Empire but the British know how
to honor their scientists. Emma Darwin survived Charles Darwin until
her death at the age of eighty-eight in 1896 (May 2, 1808-October 2,
1896) and she did not attend the formal service in London at
Westminster Abbey. She preferred to mourn in private and Emma Darwin
has been described as a "stronger-minded, tougher person than
Charles" (Gerturde Himmelfarb, 1959, Darwin And The Darwinian
Revolution, page 441).

Darwin was interred a few paces away from the resting places of
Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Charles Lyell, Michael Faraday, and William
Herschel. Darwin's pall bearers included the President of the Royal
Society, the American Minister to the British Isles (Robert Lowell),
the churchman Cannon Farrar, an earl, two dukes, and the three
leading British biologists of the times who were among his closest
scientific friends: Thomas Huxley (1825-1895), Sir Joseph Hooker
(1817-1911). and Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913). Herbert Spencer
(1820-1903) thought the occasion of Darwin's internment at the Abbey
"worthy enough [to attend] to suspend his objections to
religious ceremonies" ([Gerturde Himmelfarb, 1959, Darwin And
The Darwinian Revolution, page 440).

As an academic and a Professor of Anthropology, it has often been
asked of me, "didn't Darwin make a statement when he was dying to
the effect of 'How I wish I had not expressed my theory of evolution
as I have done'" and I simply say, he did not! His death
is discussed below, and my interpretation of what he might have said
is given, but please consider the following 1989 statement in
response to the "How I Wish" story:

"...on October 20, 1985, TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart
announced that the great British scientist repudiated his life's
work as he lay dying, and that he also asked to read the Bible so
he could know Jesus. Swaggart's was not the first to make use of
the Darwin death-bed recantation. It's an old fabrication. Shortly
after Darwin's death at seventy-four on April 19, 1882, the
evangelistic widow of Admiral of the Fleet Sir James Hope, told a
gathering of students at Northfield Seminary in Massachusetts that
she had visited Darwin in his last hours and found him reading the
Epistle to the Hebrews. Darwin, she said, announced that he wished
he "had not expressed my theory of evolution as I have done," and
he also asked her to get some people together so he could speak to
then of Jesus Christ and His salvation, being in a state where he
was eagerly savoring the heavenly anticipation of bliss." But
Darwin's daughter Henrietta vigorously denied that her father ever
made such statements. "Lady Hope was not present during his last
illness, or any illness," she declared. "I believe he never even
saw her, but in any case she had no influence over him in any
department of thought or belief. He never recanted any of his
scientific views, either then or earlier. . . . The whole story
has no foundation whatever." Francis Darwin, who was with his
father toward the end, reported that Darwin said, "I am not the
least afraid to die," a few hours before his passing. These
seem to have been his last words [STRESS added]
[Paul F. Boller and John George, 1989, They Never Said It:
A Book Of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading
Attributions, pages 19-20].

[Please click here to return
to top of the outline of this electronic paper.]

Readers of this paper may get frustrated with various dates but
there is a reason for them: time is a good way to organize
information. It is useful in any scholarly research to be aware of
the sequencing of events or what came before what. It is useful to
know the age of an individual when they have written something (so
you may determine how much experience the individual had prior to
writing); it is useful to know how old people were when they traveled
around the globe or conducted their field research; it is useful to
be aware of the context of the times, when individuals lived and when
they eventually died. In keeping with the idea of pointing out the
human side of Charles Darwin (and others), this researcher
appreciates the words of the English essayist Joseph Addison
(1672-1719) who once wrote an essay entitled "The Tombs In
Westminster Abbey" (well before Darwin was interred there) and
Addison had the following:

"When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion
of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful,
every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of
parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I
see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of
grieving for those whom we must quickly follow; when I see kings
lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed
side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their
contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on
the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. When I
read the several dates of the tombs - of some that died yesterday,
and some six hundred years ago - I consider that great day when we
shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance
together [In W.E. Williams, Editor, 1951, A Book Of
English Essays, pp. 27-30, page 30]."

1809-1831: EDUCATION

Charles R. Darwin was a bright individual who grew up in a loving,
caring, and enriched environment. Although interested in many things,
Charles Darwin's father wished that Charles Darwin should become a
physician since his father (Erasmus Darwin) had been a physician (and
somewhat of a genius in his time). Physicians were to "run in the
family" and since Charles Darwin's older brother Erasmus Darwin was
studying to become a physician, then a physician Charles Darwin was
destined to be! The Darwin family attended Edinburgh University, in
Scotland, and Charles Darwin entered Edinburgh in 1825, when he was
sixteen and he left when he was eighteen. Unfortunately, the two
years at Edinburgh demonstrated that he had neither the aptitude nor
the interest in medicine of his father and medicine was not for him.
Educational institutions are interesting and the following is from
Darwin's 1876 Autobiography:

"The instruction at Edinburgh was altogether by lectures,
and these were intolerably dull, with the exception of those on
Chemistry....to my mind there are no advantages and many
disadvantages in lectures compared with reading. ... Dr. ... made
his lectures on human anatomy as dull as he was himself, and the
subject disgusted me [ [Sir Francis Darwin (1848-1925),
Editor, 1950 edition, Charles Darwin's Autobiography: With his
Notes and Letters Depicting the Growth of the Origin Of
Species, page 19]."

Although he was later to become excited about geology, the
lectures on this subject at Edinburgh were so dull that Darwin later
recalled that they "completely sickened me of that method of
learning" and it made him resolve never to read a book on that
subject (Gertrude Himmelfarb, 1959, Darwin And The Darwinian
Revolution, page 29). It is fortunate that opinions change over
time since it was the first volume of Sir Charles Lyell's work on
geology that Darwin took with him on his voyage on the HMS
Beagle around the world in 1831-1836.

In 1827, however, Darwin could not face up to telling his father
the fact that medicine was not for him, since his older brother
Erasmus had already made his decision to give up his study of
medicine! It was through his sisters that his father learned of his
lack of interest in this profession chosen for him. If medicine was
not to be Charles Darwin's calling, then his father decided that he
must become a clergyman and a degree from Christ's College, Cambridge
was necessity for that field. One 20th Century author has written
about his father's choice of career for Charles Darwin:

"The final recourse of Victorian society for the
maintenance of misfits and dullards was the church. Young men with
no other discernible calling were graced with the highest calling
of all. That the church was, at the same time, the refuge of the
talented and brilliant did not in any way hinder it from
performing the humble but useful service of relieving despairing
fathers of surplus sons" (Gertrude Himmelfarb, 1959, Darwin And
The Darwinian Revolution, page 31).

As Darwin was growing up, the Church of England, or Anglican
Church, did interest him, and the "Church of England was the church,
established by law, for the people of England and Wales" (Lee E.
Grudel, 1979, Society And Religion During The Age Of
Industrialization: Christianity In Victorian England, page 22).
Darwin was a religious person and at the age of 19, in 1828, Charles
Robert Darwin did not "in the least doubt the strict and literal
truth of every word of the Bible" (Julian Huxley and H.B.D.
Kettlewell, 1965, Charles Darwin And His World, page 15).
Indeed, at this time in his life he was so convinced of the truth of
his religious beliefs that he found himself:

"...inventing day-dreams of old letters between
distinguished Romans and manuscripts being discovered at Pompeii
or elsewhere which confirmed in the most striking manner of all
that was written in the Gospels" (Gavin De Beer, 1964, Charles
Darwin: Evolution By Natural Selection, pages 28-29).

Charles Darwin, however, found himself lacking in the skills for
the church even though (when he began his three years of 1828-1831)
he was planning to read for religious orders. Cambridge,
incidentally, did have a reputation for catering to young men with
too much money and too little discipline. A pamphlet of that day
described:

"...in lurid detail the 'corrupt state' of the
university: habitual drunkenness, gambling, and falling into debt;
a profligacy so common that one could hardly find a female servant
in a university lodging house who had managed to preserve her
virtue; and a condition of moral laxity in which the highest
aspiration was to be recognized as an authority of food and drink"
(Gertrude Himmelfarb, 1959, Darwin And The Darwinian
Revolution, pages 33-34).

While some of this could be viewed as some of the evangelical
writings of the day, there was a modicum of truth to the above, as
perhaps there is on any university campus to this day. While at
Cambridge, for example, Charles Darwin was described as an
"enthusiastic" member of the Gourmet Club and he did admit to his
son, Francis Darwin, that once he did drink too much while at
Cambridge; but he could write to Sir Joseph Hooker that he was drunk
only "three times in early life" (Peter Brent 1981, Charles
Darwin: A Man Of Enlarged Curiosity, page 89), so he must not
have been a heavy drinker to recall all three times. A 20th century
author has written the following interesting words about the
undergraduate years of Charles Darwin:

"The fact is that Charles Darwin was in almost all
respects a fairly standard example of the nineteenth century
student, well off, active in field sports, working hard enough to
avoid academic failure, but a long way from academic success"
(Peter Brent 1981, Charles Darwin: A Man Of Enlarged
Curiosity, page 89).

What Darwin had, however, was a group of like-minded friends with
whom he could relax and have discussions. He was also fortunate to
have certain instructors who were exciting and enthusiastic and
encouraged Darwin to learn about natural history. Charles Darwin's
father, as one might imagine, became quite frustrated with him at
times, stating on one occasion that "You care for nothing but
shooting, dogs and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to
yourself and your family" (Julian Huxley and H.B.D. Kettlewell, 1965,
Charles Darwin And His World, page 16).

Although he was interested in shooting and riding, Charles Darwin
was also interested in nature and insects. At Cambridge he was
fortunate to take botany lectures from Professor of Botany (and
clergyman John Stevens Henslow [1796-1861]), whose daughter
(Frances Henslow ) would eventually marry Sir Joseph Hooker in August
1851 (S.B. Turrill, 1963, Joseph Dalton Hooker: Botanist,
Explorer, And Administrator, page 99). While there, he also read
the work of the German naturalist Friedrich Humboldt (1769-1859) and
his Personal Narrative and began to learn Spanish for a trip to
Tenerife (the largest of the Canary Islands off the northwest coast
of Africa). In 1881, Charles Darwin would describe Baron von Humboldt
as "the parent of a grand progeny of scientific travelers" (R.B.
Freeman, 1978, Charles Darwin: A Companion, page 168) since
his works not only inspired Darwin but also inspired Alfred
Russel Wallace.

Darwin began his interests in natural history while a student at
Cambridge and while there, it was Professor Henslow who persuaded him
to become interested in Geology, after his disastrous Edinburgh
experiences. Henslow also arranged for Darwin to accompany Adam
Sedgewick (1785-1873), Cambridge University Professor of Geology, on
a field trip through Wales during the Summer of 1831. In January of
1831, at the age of twenty-one, Darwin passed his examination for the
BA in Theology, Euclid, and the Classics from Cambridge University
and he had to make plans for himself. In 1877 Charles Darwin was
eventually awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Laws from his Alma Mater
as well as an M.D. from Leyden; all considered, this was not too
shabby for someone who was once categorized as a potential "family
disgrace" earlier in the century; also see See R. B. Freeman, 1978,
Charles Darwin: A Companion for Darwin's Degrees And Scientific
Honors, pages 98-110; these included Honorary Member of the
American Philosophical Society (1869), Honorary Member of the New
York Academy of Sciences (1879), Honorary Member of the California
Academy of Sciences (1872), and Contributing Member of the California
State Geological Society (1877).

HIGHLIGHT OF 1831: GETTING ON HMS BEAGLE

In the Summer of 1831 Charles Darwin was in Wales with Sedgwick
while Henslow was invited by Captain Robert FitzRoy (1805-1865), of
HM Royal Navy, to become the naturalist on board HMS Beagle on a
planned circumnavigation of the globe. Henslow's wife, however, did
not wish him to partake of such an extensive voyage and Henslow's
brother-in-law, also a clergyman and a naturalist by the name of
Leonard Jenyns was going to take Henslow's place, but at the last
minute, he changed his mind. On the 24th of August 1831, Henslow
wrote to tell Charles Darwin that he had informed Captain FitzRoy
that Darwin, was the most qualified individual to take the trip and
he was recommended to become the volunteer naturalist (this meant
without pay) on a world-wide research expedition, scheduled to leave
England in 1831.

HMS Beagle sailed from England on the 27th of December in
1831 and Darwin did not to return to his native land for four years,
nine months and two days. On 2 October 1836 HMS Beagle
returned to England and on 4 October 1836 Darwin returned to
Shrewsbury and his family. He would spend the intervening years in
sailing and gathering and recording information from various
locations all over the globe. It was a magnificent experience.

An academic degree, however, combined with an interest in natural
history, and a professorial recommendation were almost not sufficient
for Charles Darwin to go on the HMS Beagle. His father was
opposed to Darwin taking part in the voyage and Darwin would have
followed his father's wishes not to go on the voyage had not his
uncle, Jos Wedgwood, interceded for him and convinced his father to
allow him to go. The fact of the matter was that after Darwin's
father stated his opposition to his embarking upon the HMS
Beagle, Darwin did write to Henslow on the 31st of August 1831,
turning down the offer, but on the very-next-day, Uncle Jos traveled
thirty miles to visit Darwin's father and he convinced him that it
would be wise for Charles Darwin to accept the position. On the
following day Darwin went off to see Henslow in Cambridge and on the
5th of September 1831 he met with Captain Robert FitzRoy in
London.

When Darwin finally met FitzRoy, he discovered that not only had
his father been opposed to his taking the trip, but Captain FitzRoy,
who was all of twenty-six years of age to Darwin's twenty-two, almost
caused him to stay behind as well. FitzRoy, an amateur physiognomist,
thought that the shape of Darwin's "nose" was too weak to take a
lengthy sea voyage! Darwin did take that voyage. FitzRoy,
incidentally was no simple Royal Navy Officer. It was he who gave us
the expression "port" for sailors, replacing "larboard" prior to the
trip on HMS Beagle since "larboard" was too easily confused with
starboard. FitzRoy eventually was promoted to Rear-Admiral (1857). He
reached the rank of Vice-Admiral (1865) and began a system of weather
forecasting and storm warnings (a system that exists to this day in
one form or another). FitzRoy became head of HM Meteorological Office
and from 1843-1845 he was the Governor of New Zealand, islands that
the British Empire claimed in the South Pacific (so that France would
not acquire them). FitzRoy was an excellent naval officer and captain
and in 1851 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (and Charles
Darwin was one of his co-sponsors) (R.D. Keynes, editor, 1979, The
Beagle Record: Selections From The Original Pictorial Record And
Written Accounts Of H.M.S. Beagle, pages 7-8).

Darwin was not the first choice of naturalist on the HMS Beagle.
The position first had been offered to Henslow (who declined) and
then Henslow's brother-in-law who changed his mind about going on
HMS Beagle. After Darwin's Uncle Jos had convinced his father
to allow Darwin to go, imagine Darwin's consternation when he finally
met Captain FitzRoy on that 5th of September in 1831 and discovered
that FitzRoy wanted neither Henslow nor Darwin but preferred a
personal friend to accompany him on the HMS Beagle!
Fortunately, a few moments before Darwin's appointment with the
Captain, FitzRoy's friend informed him that he was unable to leave
his job for the lengthy voyage and Darwin had his interview. Darwin
obviously overcame the Captain's concerns with his nose, and they
eventually departed England on the 27th of December 1831.

A small statement due here which should make readers of this paper
consider the value of the influence of the individual in everything:
(#1) Professor Henslow was initially invited but(#2) his wife did not wish him to go and(#3),
Darwin had problems with his father until(#4) Uncle
Jos Wedgwood intervened on his behalf. Darwin later learned the
following:

"In London, FitzRoy had asked Captain Francis Beaufort,
R.N., hydrographer to the navy, not for a geologist but for a
naturalist to sail with him on his second voyage [in
1831]. Beaufort passed on the request to his friend the
Reverend George Peacock, later Lowndean Professor of Astronomy at
Cambridge. Peacock first asked his naturalist friend Leonard
Jenyns, an Anglican clergyman, if he would take the post. But
Jenyns (who later changed his name to Bloomfield), a close friend
of Darwin's, held a living in Cambridgeshire and felt he could not
abandon it for a voyage round the world. Peacock then passed on
the request to Henslow. A number of other young men appear to have
been approached and to have turned down the offer. ... Darwin
[eventually] jumped at the offer passed on by Henslow"
(Ronald Clark, 1984, The Survival Of Charles Darwin: A
Biography Of A Man And An Idea, pages 17-18).

From individual A-to-B-to-C-and eventually D! As Stephen H. Gould
has written, Darwin really wasn't the "naturalist" that went aboard
the HMS Beagle in 1831 and Gould pointed out that it was
really the HMS Beagle surgeon, Robert McKormick, who
originally held the official position as "naturalist" on-board the
HMS Beagle (S.J. Gould, 1977, Ever Since Darwin:
Reflections In Natural History, pages 28-31). FitzRoy wanted a
traveling companion (a gentleman to accompany him) and Darwin was to
be the "gentleman naturalist" on board (with no navy duties to do).
McKormick was to be the official naturalist. While on HMS
Beagle, Darwin had the Captain's ear on numerous occasions and in
April of 1832, McCormick left the HMS Beagle and was
"invalided out" back to Britain; and Darwin was then the naturalist
on board HMS Beagle.

In the 1990s, with individuals so mobile all across the globe,
perhaps it is difficult to comprehend the immobility that existed in
Darwin's time. This is why his personal trip, his five-year
world-wide trip made such an impression on him and began to provide
him information about changes over time. Please consider, if you
will, who and where Darwin was in 1831. He had made a previous trip,
to the European continent, in 1827 (accompanying his cousin Jos
Wedgwood and his sister Caroline) (R.B. Freeman, 1978, Charles
Darwin: A Companion, page 98 and page 296). Charles Darwin lived
on an island which was relatively small and where the highest
mountain, if you dare to call it that in the Scottish Highlands,
barely exceeded 4,400 feet. Later Darwin would be climbing 12,000
feet into the Andes of South America and he would write for the 23rd
of April 1835 while in South America that:

"It was something more than enjoyment: I cannot express
the delight which I felt at such a famous winding up of all my
Geology in South America. I literally could hardly sleep at nights
for thinking over my day's work. The scenery was so new & so
majestic; everything at an elevation of 12,000 ft. bears so
different an aspect from that in a lower country. I have seen many
views more beautiful, but none with so strongly a character. To a
Geologist also there are such manifest proofs of excessive
violence; the strata of the highest pinnacles are tossed about
like the crust of a broken pie" (R.B. Freeman, 1978, Charles
Darwin: A Companion, pages 116-117).

Perhaps one can best convey the "changes" from Darwin's 19th
century to our 20th century by quoting from the eminent 20th century
historian, Barbara Tuchman who wrote the following in 1966:

"...the industrial and scientific revolutions [of the
19th century] had transformed the world. Man had entered the
Nineteenth Century using only his own and animal power,
supplemented by that of wind and water, much as he had entered the
Thirteenth, of, for that matter, the First" (Barbara W. Tuchman,
1966, The Proud Tower: A portrait Of the World Before The War
1890-1914, pages xvi-xvii).

Please consider those words: "Much as we had entered the 13th
century," or the first century, or the twelve-hundred to
seventeen-hundred years in-between [STRESS added]"
Tuchman continued about our century that mankind:

"...entered the Twentieth with his capacities in
transportation, communication, production, manufacturing and
weaponry multiplied a thousandfold by the energy of machines.
Industrial society gave man new powers and new scope...."

Darwin's five-year voyage was the most exciting experience for
him: please think of the advantages of travel that we have today to
go around the world. We can travel all over the planet and places
that were exotic to Darwin are as commonplace to us as . . . well, we
can go around the world in days; in Darwin's time it was years! In a
poetical 1991 description of a trip to Tierra del Fuego, Richard Lee
Marks (writing in Three Men Of The Beagle) had the
following:

"Nowadays, when you can jet from New York to Buenos Aires
to Ushuaia with a stop-over in Comodoro Rivadavia, all within
twenty-four hours (if your connections are excellent), you may
still stand there on the shore looking across the gray-green water
of the Beagle Channel at Navarin Island--but you may be less
respectful of the strangeness and your mind-set may be more
intractable, less susceptible to the great question of human
existence [STRESS added]" (R.L. Marks, 1991, Three
Men Of The Beagle, pages 5-6).

In 1843, were Darwin to consider a trip from England to Rome,
Italy, he would have to allocate twenty-one days of his life-time to
make that passage; by 1860, with the widespread introduction of
railways, this was down to a "mere" 2 & 1/2 days! Now, one can
cross the English Channel via the "chunnel" in a matter of minutes or
fly into Rome in a matter of hours. In 1860, a passage to North
America from England by sailing vessel would take anywhere from
two-to-eight weeks (although by 1889 the steamship had reduced it to
a mere five days) (Susan S. Thurin, 1988, "Travel And Tourism" in
Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia, pages 817-818). This is
why Darwin's voyage of the HMS Beagle, beginning when he was
an intelligent (and well trained) impressionable individual at the
age of 22 was so exciting. The trip exposed him to many different
things that he could never see in his immediate British environment
and he was turned on by the world! Today, we can telephone Britain in
a few minutes and we can get television pictures from around the
world via satellite and changes continue to occur: consider the
tremendous information capability of the INTERNET. In 1858, one year
before Darwin's Origin was published, a simple 90 word
telegraph message between the American President Buchanan and
Darwin's Queen Victoria took 16 1/2 hours to cross the Atlantic via a
newly-laid undersea cable. Sixteen & 1/2 hours for a ninety-word
message. [2]

THE VOYAGE ON HMS BEAGLE: 1831 TO 1836

The HMS Beagle, a ninety-foot long/twenty-four foot wide
vessel, carried a total of 74 persons around the globe. Numerous
ports of call were visited, most of which were on the continent of
South America. Although Darwin was seasick for many days throughout
the five-year voyage, the trip of the HMS Beagle gave him
ample opportunity to collect various specimens from around the world
and fill some twenty-four pocket notebooks with daily entries. Darwin
was also able to send off some thirty-nine letters back to England.
Darwin clearly viewed his voyage on HMS Beagle as one of the
most important events of his lifetime.

The HMS Beagle was classified as a sloop-brig of the Royal
Navy and though she normally carried ten guns, four were removed (in
order to carry more stores) for their voyage. The guns were rarely
fired because they would interfere with the twenty-two chronometers
carried on board for navigational purposes. Darwin learned that the
HMSBeagle had just returned from a four-year voyage to
South America, under the command of Captain FitzRoy, and was to be
completely refurbished for the 1831 sailing. Equipped with over 6000
cases of vegetables, tinned meats, barrels of lime juice, medicines,
and preservatives for specimens, HMS Beagle displaced more
than 500 tons when it sailed in 1831. A measure of the success of any
leader is his, or her, ability to command the respect and allegiance
of the individuals with whom he or she works. Two-thirds of the crew
who had been with Captain FitzRoy on his previous voyage to South
America in the years 1828-1830 had also "signed-up" to accompany him
on this latest voyage. FitzRoy was a good Captain and had the respect
of his crew.

In addition to the ship's crew, HMS Beagle also carried
eight marines, an artist, and instrument maker, as well as three
aborigines from Tierra del Fuego, who had been brought to England
when the HMSBeagle returned from that last expedition.
These natives, as well as a missionary, were being transported out to
that southernmost part of the continent of South America. On his
previous trip to South America, Captain FitzRoy chose to take four
Fuegians back to England. One had died and the other three (Fuegia
Basket, York Minister, and Jeremy Button) were to be returned home.
While in England, Fuegia and Jeremy were married and Captain FitzRoy
"paid for their support and Christian education" (Walter Karp, 1968,
Charles Darwin And The origin Of Species, page 29).

Captain FitzRoy eventually came to deeply regret his decision to
allow Darwin to take part in the voyage of HMS Beagle. The
Captain was a deeply evangelical and religious individual and a
member of the conservative Tory party and while Darwin still had
religious feelings when he began the trip on the HMS Beagle,
he was a member of the more liberal Whigs. The Tories "generally
represented the conservative elements [in Britain] especially
the small rural landholders, while the Whigs tended to represent
commercial interests" (Lee E. Grugel, 1979, Society And Religion
During The Age Of Industrialization: Christianity In Victorian
England, page 8). The Whig party was opposed to slavery
(abolished in 1833), wished for the extension extension of suffrage,
and had major disagreements with the Tories. These disagreements,
unfortunately, were reflected upon several occasions between the
Captain and Darwin during the voyage. With his Evangelical beliefs,
Captain FitzRoy was bringing back the Fuegians to spread the
Christian word in South America; FitzRoy was also convinced "that he
would find scientific proof that the Book of Genesis was literally
true" and he wanted a naturalist on board HMS Beagle for this
purpose, as well as companionship (Walter Karp, 1968, Charles
Darwin And The Origin Of Species, page 29).

Within a few years, however, FitzRoy became obsessed with the idea
that he was responsible for Darwin's published views. FitzRoy was so
indignant about Darwin's 1859 publication of On The Origin of
Species, that when the first public debate concerning the
publication was held at Oxford in 1860, FitzRoy (then an Admiral in
the Royal Navy) appeared at the meeting and waved a Bible and
shouted that he had warned Darwin "against holding views contrary to
the word of God." FitzRoy committed suicide in 1865 by cutting his
own throat. Let me provide a capsule summary concerning the times of
Charles Darwin:

"The political and social temper of English life at this
time was conservative, in reaction to the excesses of the French
Revolution [of 1789]. Biologists of Darwin's time,
including the [Swiss-American] Louis Aggasiz and Richard
Owen, believed that different forms of life were created
separately. Only a century before, geologists had believed that
the earth was only four thousand years old and although geologists
of Darwin's time, such as Charles Lyell, had proved by study of
rock formations that the earth was older, there was no real notion
of the truly vast age of the earth" (Jay E. Greene, 1964, 100
Great Scientists, page 246).

Sir Charles Lyell (1797-1875) was an important geologist whose
words were an inspiration to Darwin on his circumnavigation of the
globe. Lyell gave Darwin (and others who read his works) the gift of
time. Lyell forced the reader to consider the tremendous passage of
time that has occurred on the planet. Darwin started out the voyage
on HMS Beagle with the first volume of Lyell's Principles
of Geology (1830), presented to him by FitzRoy. The second volume
of the three-volume magnum opus reached Darwin in Montevideo,
South America, on the 26th of October 1832 and Darwin continued to
read Principles while on the voyage. When he boarded HMS
Beagle as a young man of twenty-two, Darwin considered himself
quite a religious individual and he often bore the brunt of a good
deal of laughter "from several of the officers for quoting the
Bible as final authority on some moral point" (Bern Dibner,
1964, Darwin Of The Beagle, page 82). Over time, however,
Darwin had gradually come to think the following:

"...that the Old Testament from its manifest false
history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow as a
sign, etc., etc., and from its attributing to God the feelings of
a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted that the sacred
books of the Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian" (Bern
Dibner, 1964, Darwin Of The Beagle, pages 82-83; and please
see Nora Barlow, 1958, The Autobiography Of Charles Darwin
1809-1882, pages 78-79 and page 85).

Darwin went out across the world and observed phenomena of nature
that did not fit into certain theories which he held. When they
finally arrived at the Galápagos Islands on the 15th of
September 1835, some 600 miles west of the South American nation of
Ecuador (on the equator), Darwin continuing taking notes. He was
eventually was to write that "nothing could be less inviting than the
first appearance" of these islands that they were to cruise for a
little more than a month. Galápagos means "tortoise" in
Spanish and there are more than two dozen islands in the entire
cluster, with their combined land mass being approximately 2,800
square miles. The islands themselves are approximately 175 miles
across and there are really six major islands, with the largest one
(Albemarle) some sixty miles long. As a point of comparison, Butte
County is some 1,646 square miles and Tehama County, to the north is
similar in size to the Galápagos (2,953 square miles) as is
Santa Barbara County (2,748 square miles) in the southern part of
this state. Perhaps one of the most vivid description of the islands
comes from the American Author Herman Melville (1819-1891), who
stopped in the Galápagos on the whaler Acushnet,
shortly after the visit of the HMS Beagle. Melville wrote:

"Take five-and-twenty heaps of cinders dumped here and
there in an outside city lot--imagine some of them magnified into
mountains, and the vacant lot the sea; and you will have a fit
idea of the general aspect of the Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles.
A group of rather extinct volcanoes than of isles; looking much as
the world at large might, after a penal conflagration" (Nigel
Calder, 1973, The Life Game: Evolution And The New Biology,
page 44).

Quite a dramatic description but quite an accurate and fascinating
one. HMS Beagle and Charles Darwin and the crew stayed a month
in the Galápagos and they gathered specimens of all sorts.
Tortoises that weighed up to 500 pounds, as well as iguanas that
abounded on all of the islands, and a variety of small finch. Even
though Charles R. Darwin was a fair naturalist at this point in time
(HMS Beagle had been exploring since 1831), it is quite clear
that the facts of nature "do not speak for themselves" since someone
has to do the interpreting. In a 1973 publication, Sir Nigel Calder
wrote of a 1835 meeting that Darwin had in the Galápagos
Islands with Mr. Lawson, the Englishman who was then the
Vice-Governor of that group:

"When the Vice-Governor remarked that he could tell from
which island any tortoise had been brought, Darwin pricked up his
ears. HE HAD BEEN CARELESSLY MIXING UP HIS SPECIMENS FROM
DIFFERENT ISLANDS, NEVER DREAMING THAT THE ISLANDS WOULD HAVE BEEN
'DIFFERENTLY TENANTED'; he quickly mended his way [Calder
continued]. He examined the mockingbirds collected by himself
and his shipmates, and FOUND TO HIS ASTONISHMENT THAT ALL THE
BIRDS FROM ONE ISLAND BELONGED TO ONE SPECIES AND ALL FROM ANOTHER
TO A DIFFERENT SPECIES. BUT HE HAD HOPELESSLY MUDDLED MOST OF HIS
SPECIMENS OF THE FINCHES THAT WERE TO MAKE THE GALAPAGOS AND
HIMSELF JOINTLY FAMOUS" [All STRESS added].

Please re-read that part of the phrase: "BUT HE HAD HOPELESS
MUDDLED MOST OF HIS SPECIMENS OF THE FINCHES THAT WERE TO MAKE THE
GALAPAGOS AND HIMSELF JOINTLY FAMOUS." What a mess, but who would
have thought about the impact of the finches? Calder continued:

"Who can blame him? They are small birds, the males being
black and the females brown. When you glimpse them flitting among
the thirsty trees of the Galapagos it is hard to acknowledge the
impact such modest birds had on the human mind and its religious
beliefs" (Nigel Calder, 1973, The Life Game: Evolution And The
New Biology, pages 45-46).

HMS Beagle departed the Galápagos and headed across
the Pacific Ocean to Australia, then across the Indian Ocean, and
back to England, and the "mixed-up finches" were handed over to John
Gould, an ornithologist. It was Gould who confirmed a "perfect
gradation in the size of the beaks in the different species" since
there were some birds with massive beaks, like nutcrackers, while
there were other finches with beaks so delicate, they could be used
as tweezers; and there were many forms of beaks which were
intermediate. Darwin wrote in the first published account on the
voyage of the HMS Beagle in 1839:

"Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one
small intimately related group of birds, one might really fancy
that from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one
species had been taken and modified for different ends."

Towards the end of the voyage of the HMS Beagle, even while
Darwin was still at sea, he began to question the fixity of species
that was then prevalent in biological thought and he wrote:

"When I recollect the fact, that from the form of the
body, shape of scale, and general size, the Spaniards can at once
pronounce from which Island any tortoise may have been brought;
when I see these Islands in sight of each other and possessed of
but a scanty stock of animals, tenanted by these birds but
slightly differing in structure and filling the same place in
Nature, I must suspect they are only varieties. The only fact of a
similar kind of which I am aware is the constant asserted
difference between the wolf-like Fox of East and West Falkland
Islands. If there is the slightest foundation for these remarks,
the Zoology of Archipelagoes will be well worth examining; FOR
SUCH FACTS WOULD UNDERMINE THE STABILITY OF SPECIES [STRESS
added]" (Gavin De Beer, 1964, Charles Darwin: Evolution
By Natural Selection, page 82).

The non-fixity of species and different tenanted islands continued
to nag Darwin and within two years of his return to England in 1836,
he began to take detailed and copious notes on the transmutation of
species. Dov Ospovat stated it succinctly in his 1981 publication
entitled The Development Of Darwin's Theory: Natural History,
Natural Theology, And Natural Selection, 1838-1859:

"When he left England on H.M.S. Beagle in 1831,
Darwin believed, with most of his contemporaries, that each
species has been independently created with characteristics that
suit it admirably for the conditions under which it was destined
to live. By the spring of 1837 he was a transmutationist,
believing that each species has descended from some other
previously existing species and that its characteristics have been
determined largely by heredity" (Dov Ospovat, 1981,The
Development Of Darwin's Theory: Natural History, Natural Theology,
And Natural Selection, 1838-1859:, page 6).

Even though Darwin was struck by the variety of life forms in the
Galápagos, and this contributed to his thinking about
"changes" in species, not everyone sees nature in the same way. Louis
Aggasiz (1807-1873), the distinguished Swiss-American scientist who
specialized in ichthyology and geology, was "without a doubt, the
greatest and most influential naturalist of nineteenth-century
America" (Stephen J. Gould, 1983, Hen's Teeth And Horse's Toes:
Further Reflections In Natural History, page 108). In 1983,
Stephen Gould wrote about Aggasiz:

"A Swiss by birth, he [Aggasiz] was the first
great European theorist in biology to make America his home. He
had charm, wit, and connections aplenty, and he took the Boston
Brahmins by storm. He was an intimate of Emerson, Longfellow, and
anyone who really mattered in America's most patrician town. He
published and raised money with equal zeal and virtually
established natural history as a professional discipline in
America; indeed [Gould continues], I am writing this
article in the great museum [at Harvard University] that
he built" (Stephen J. Gould, 1983, Hen's Teeth And Horse's
Toes: Further Reflections In Natural History, page 108).

Gould pointed out that brilliant as Aggasiz was, he had a certain
way of viewing the world. In June of 1872, thirty-three years after
Darwin's HMS Beagle publication, Aggasiz visited the
Galápagos Islands, viewing the same natural phenomena that
Darwin observed. Darwin saw nature and change and thought about it
and Aggasiz saw nature and stability and thought about it in his way:
Aggasiz did not see changes through time and he did not see natural
selection. Although Aggasiz died shortly after his visit to the
Galápagos, his 1860 remarks on Darwin's Origin was
still probably his opinion in 1872: "I shall therefore consider the
transmutation theory [of Darwin] as a scientific mistake,
untrue in its facts, unscientific in its method, and mischievous in
its tendency (R.B. Freeman, 1978, Charles Darwin: A
Companiuon, page 18). Readers should also consult Lurie who
points out:

"...the sources of Aggasiz's convictions that led him to
dismiss Darwin so easily are significant, because they provide
revealing indexes to the kind of philosophic and scientific
opposition Darwin encountered both in Americ and Europe" (E.A.
Lurie, 1959, "Louis Aggasiz And the Idea Of Evolution" In
Victorian Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1, pages 87-108, pages
92-93).

Facts do not speak for themselves for as the distinguished 20th
Century Historian Arnold J. Toynbee has written, one should consider
the following:

"Facts are not really like boulders that have been
detached and shaped and deposited exclusively by the play of
forces of non-human nature. They are like flaked and chipped
flints, hewn stones, bricks or briquettes. Human action has had a
hand in making them what they are, and they would not be what they
are if this action had not taken place. ... Facts are, in
truth, exactly what is meant by the Latin word facta from which
the English word is derived. They are 'things that have been made"
[STRESS added] (Arnold J. Toynbee, 1964, A Study Of
History: Reconsiderations, Volume 12, page 250).

Darwin traveled the globe with several important things: an
inquisitive mind as well as scientific background and training. He
was certainly not the only individual to see diversity on the planet
but he certainly became one of most eloquent chroniclers:

"The expansion into the whole world of European explorers
had provided naturalists for the first time with a significant
accumulation of biogeographical data. These data exhibited
obviously significant regularities in the distribution of
organisms, regularities that cried out for explanation. ...
Darwin himself had observed all these sorts of things carefully
on the voyage of the Beagle. And in particular, of course, there
was the experience of the Galapagos" [STRESS added].

THE IN-BETWEEN YEARS: 1836 TO 1858

HMS Beagle landed in England on the 2nd of October 1836 and
Darwin went to Shrewsbury on the 4th. He settled in, proposed to Emma
Wedgwood on November 11, 1838 and they were married January 30, 1839.
Initially they established their home in London and Emma wrote that
when Charles was looking for a house to rent for them at this period
of time, that "it is as well that I am coming to look after you, my
poor old man" (Darwin was 27), "for it is quite evident that you are
on the verge of insanity" and Darwin, who had circumnavigated the
globe, was threatened with an advertisement by Emma which would
state: "Lost in the vicinity of Bloomsbury, a tall thin gentleman
quite harmless" [Edna Healey, 1986, Wives Of Fame: Mary
Livingstone, Jenny Marx, Emma Darwin, page 155].

Prior to his marriage in January of 1839, Darwin was appointed
Secretary of the Geological Society of London on the 16th of February
1838, a position he held until his health was too poor to allow him
to go on any further expeditions. His last geology excursion was in
1842, when he went to Wales to observe the evidence of glacial
action.

1839-1882: PUBLICATIONS

After Charles Darwin and Emma Wedgwood were married in 1839 they
eventually left London in 1842 and several major works were published
by Darwin over these years which demonstrated to the public (as well
as his scientific colleagues) that he was in fact "an accurate,
thorough, and reliable naturalist" and he was also a "descriptive
biologist of great finesse, capable also in experimental inquiry"
[Charles C. Gillispie, 1968, "Charles Darwin" in International
Encyclopedia of the Social Science, Vol. 4, page 7].
Publications during these years included his travels on HMS
Beagle (in 1839), The Structure and Distribution of Coral
Reefs (1842), Geological Observations on the Volcanic
Islands (1844), as well as Geological observations on South
America (1846).

It should be pointed out that just as Darwin's 1859 Origin
has changed over time, his first 1839 HMS Beagle description
originally bore the ponderous (and perhaps appropriately 19th
Century) title of: Narrative of the Surveying Voyage of His
Majesty's Ships Adventure and Beagle, Between the years 1826 and
1836, Describing Their Examination of the Southern Shores of South
America, And the Beagle's Circumnavigation of the Globe, Vol. III.
Journal and Remarks, 1832-1836. In 1845, this became Journal
of Researches and-so-forth, and later editions saw other
permutations such as Naturalist's Voyage Round the World.
Eventually the book became simply The Voyage of the Beagle
[5].

Darwin has been called an atheist by some but please note that in
his 1839 publication The Voyage Of The Beagle he wrote the
following towards the end of the book:

"Among the scenes which are
deeply impressed on my mind, none exceed in sublimity the primeval
forests undefaced by the hand of man; whether those of Brazil,
where the powers of Life are predominant, or those of Tierra del
Fuego, where Death and Decay prevail. Both are temples filled
with the varied productions of the God of Nature:--no one can
stand in these solitudes unmoved, and not feel that there is
more in man than the mere breath of his body" [STRESS
added] (Charles R. Darwin, 1839, The Voyage Of The
Beagle ) [3]

This paper was completed in January 1995 and only slightly
modified and placed on the World Wide Web in September 1996; just as
this "electronic" WWW paper must be viewed within the context of the
late 20th Century, I hope to place Darwin's 1859 publication into the
context of his times. Known as Origin, but more properly
entitled On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection,
or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life, it
was published almost 137 years ago on the 26th of November 1859 when
Darwin was fifty years of age. The 1,250 copies of that first edition
were quickly sold and the book is still being read to the present. As
a result of Origin Darwin was accused of discussing the
"evolution" of human beings. To the contrary, all Darwin had to write
about human beings in the first edition of Origin in 1859 was
the following:

"In the distant future I see open fields for far more
important researches. Psychology will be based on a new
foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power
and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of
man and his history." [Chapter XIV: Recapitulation and
Conclusion.] [6]

Origin was revised by Charles Darwin no less than five
times in his own lifetime, beginning the second revision on the 8th
of December 1859, twelve days after the first edition was sold out.
All told, Origin went through six editions (all slightly
different), the last of which was published on February 19, 1872.
From 1859, until the time of his death in 1882, some 25,500 English
copies had been published in Britain alone [Morse Peckham,
Editor, 1959, The Origin Of Species By Charles Darwin: A Variorum
Text, page 24].

On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the
Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life is the
complete title, but keep in mind that titles change over the years.
The passage of time, as well as the context of the times, is
important for an understanding of any created work of mankind, be it
a scientific tome or invention, a work of fiction, or a piece of art.
I stress the importance of time for a very good reason: time means
change. Change from a specific point at time "x" to point at time
"x+1" and authors and opinions and interpretations of "facts" change
over time!

The first edition of Origin was published in 1859 at the
strong urging of his scientific associates, Hooker (famous for the
naming of the "Hooker Oak" during his 1877 visit to Chico) and Sir
Charles Lyell (immortalized in California by Mt. Lyell, so named in
1863 by the Whitney Survey Party of the Sierra Nevada ). Darwin
included the word "On" in the original title and this simple
proposition was dropped by the final, or 6th edition of 1872. This,
you might think is an extremely trivial point: the word "On"
in the first edition and deleted by the final edition; but when taken
in combination with some other "minor" points that I should like to
make you aware of (such as Darwin's words on the "Creator") it should
give you pause about (a) what you may think you know about Origin and
(b) what you think you may know about Darwin's point of view.

In his lifetime Darwin published nineteen books in addition to
Origin and he was also a very prolific correspondent, writing
numerous letters to scientific colleagues and friends as well as some
ninety communications to learned societies of the time [R.B.
Freeman, 1965, The Works of Charles Darwin: An Annotated
Bibliographic Handlist, page 1]. Darwin's final publication,
indeed, did come in the last year of his life because the
physiologist George J. Romanes (1848-1894) published his Animal
Intelligence (1882) and it contained extracts from Darwin's "note
on behavior, published with his permission and in press before his
death [R.B. Freeman, 1978, Charles Darwin: A
Companion]." Writing is an important form of communication
and if you are told that the secret of good writing is re-writing,
please believe it.

INTELLECTUAL CLIMATE: THE GENEALOGY

In July of 1837, Charles Darwin began his notebooks (which
culminated in Origin) and started gathering all of the facts
that he could on variations in plants and animals, both under
domestication and existing in the wilds of nature. By 1844 Darwin had
enlarged his notes into a sketch of the conclusions he thought
probable and those notes and research resulted in the 1859
Origin.

The "true" inspiration for Darwin's research came in October of
1838 and it has been well-documented by many of Darwin's chroniclers.
A statement from Louis Pasteur (1882-1895) is appropriate: "In the
field of observation, chance only favors those who are prepared." In
October of 1838, "reading a work--just for amusement," Darwin found a
theory. He was reading a particular essay dealing with population and
as he wrote in his Autobiography:

"In October, 1838, that is fifteen months after I had
begun my systematic enquiry, I happened to read for amusement
Malthus on Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the
struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from
long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it
at once struck me that UNDER THESE CIRCUMSTANCES FAVOURABLE
VARIATIONS WOULD TEND TO BE PRESERVED, AND UNFAVORABLE ONES TO BE
DESTROYED. The result of this would be the formation of a new
species. HERE THEN I HAD AT LAST GOT A THEORY BY WHICH TO
WORK...." [all STRESS added] [Francis
Darwin, 1950, Charles Darwin's Autobiography: With His Notes
And Letters Depicting The Growth of The Origin of Species,
page 54].

The English economist Robert Malthus (1766-1834), a 1788 graduate
of Cambridge and a Church of England clergyman, published
(anonymously) in 1798 An Essay on the Principles of
Population. It was a gloomy little essay. Malthus wrote that the
growth in a population would always exceed the growth in the
available food supply and that human numbers would have to be kept
down by war, disease, plagues, crime, famine, or the like. The 1798
publication of the book was greeted by a storm of outrage and in the
subsequent and enlarged edition of 1803 its tone was slightly
modified, but it was a pessimistic view of the human condition.
Malthus revised the book several times and it was probably the 1826
edition with which Darwin was most familiar with (since this is the
annotated edition which is preserved in the Cambridge University
Library) [R. Keynes, 1983, "Malthus and Biological Equilibria" in
Malthus Past And Present, page 360].

The Reverend Malthus was observing the unbridled checks of the
Industrial Revolution in England: technology was rampant, population
was increasing, and there were problems in the world. The population
for all of Europe, as an example, was only 140 million in the year
1750 and it would almost double to 266 Million a century later. In
London of 1750, two-out-of-every three children born that year did
not survive to their fifth birthday.

Malthus was writing in reaction to individuals outside of England
and the complete title of his anonymous publication is worth
considering for it was entitled An Essay on the Principle of
Population, As It Affects The Future Improvement Of Society With
Remarks On The Speculations Of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, And Other
Writers. For background on the intellectual history of Charles
Darwin, one need not go back to the publication of the African Saint
Augustine (354 A.D.-430 A.D.) and his celebrated 410 A.D. publication
of Civita Dei (The City of God), written to maintain
the faith of Christians after the sack of Rome by the Goths, but one
should be aware of four major French authors of the 19th century who
played a role in the work of Malthus and, eventually, Darwin's work.
These four individuals also contributed to the work of Alfred Russel
Wallace, who was ALSO inspired by a reading of Malthus while
employed as a naturalist in the Malay states in the 1850s.
Intelligent individuals of the day read widely and received
information and inspiration from various sources.

Charles Darwin was inspired by Malthus and Wallace was inspired by
Malthus. Malthus, in his time, was inspired by the publication of
Condorcet (1743-1794) who wrote Esquisse d'un tableau historique
des progrès de l'espirit humain (Outline of the
Intellectual Progress of Mankind), published one year after his
death. This, you can see, is a very "positive" upbeat title;
Condorcet, along with Turgot (1727-1781), Montesquieu (1689-1755),
and Auguste Comte (1798-1857), were the most influential individuals
of their times and I believe (although we may not realize it), their
influence continues to our times. Comte, along with St. Simon
(1760-1825) are the titular "fathers" of Sociologie but in
1852 Comte wrote of the need for a seventh science, namely
anthropologie [Charles F. Urbanowicz, 1992, "Four-Field
Commentary" in Anthropology Newsletter, Vol. 33, No. 9, page
3]! Gould has written about another researcher who discussed the
influence of Comte on Darwin:

"Silvan S. Schweber has reconstructed, in detail as
minute as the record will allow, Darwin's activities during the
few weeks before [Darwin read] Malthus (The Origin of the
Origin Revisited, Journal of the History of Biology,
1977). He argues that the final pieces arose not from new facts in
natural history, but from Darwin's intellectual wanderings in
distant fields. In particular, he read a long review of social
scientist and philosopher Auguste Comte's most famous work, the
Cours de philosophie positive. He was particularly struck by
Comte's insistence that a proper theory be predictive and at least
potentially quantitative. He then turned to Dugald Stewart's On
the Life and Writing of Adam Smith, and imbibed the basic belief
of the Scottish economists that theories of overall social
structure must begin by analyzing the unconstrained actions of
individuals. (Natural selection is, above all, a theory about the
struggle of individual organisms for success in reproduction.)
Then, searching for quantification he read a lengthy analysis of
work by the most famous statistician of his time--the Belgian
Adolphe Quetelet. In the review of Quetelet, he found, among other
things, a forceful statement of Malthus's quantitative claim--that
population would grow geometrically and food supplies only
arithmetically, thus guaranteeing an intense struggle for
existence. In fact, Darwin had read the Malthusian statement
several times before; but only now was he prepared to appreciate
its significance. Thus [Gould argues], he did not turn to
Malthus by accident, and he already knew what it contained. His
'amusement,' we must assume [according to Gould],
consisted only in a desire to read in its original formulation the
familiar statement that had so impressed him in Quetelet's
secondary account" [Stephen J. Gould, 1980, "Darwin's Middle
Road" in The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections In Natural
History, pages 65-66].

There are definitely "connections" that exist if we have the time
and patience to seek them out: in 1721 Montesquieu anonymously
published Lettres persanes (translated as the Persian
Letters) which was a satire on European customs and in 1734 he
published Les Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur
ret de la décadence des Romaines (Considerations of the
Causes of the grandeur & the Decadence of the Romans ) whose
title should speak for itself. Montesquieu was a prolific writer and
in 1748 he published L'Esprit des lois (The Spirit of the
Laws). In these publications we received ideas about culture
(1721), the failure and development of a mighty empire (1734) and the
importance of laws for all humanity (a forerunner of what would
eventually be discovered/described as "cultural relativity" by
various anthropologists).

In 1750, Turgot initiated the first steps to set of "stages" of
progressive cultural development, beginning with the hunting stage,
which was followed by pastoral life, thence to agriculture and the
formation of government (in Tableau philosophique des
progrès successifs de l'esprit humain). In 1794 Condorcet
wrote his very positive work outlining or presenting the idea that
mankind could discover the laws of social life and develop social
improvements according to these laws. At this time, Condorcet was in
hiding from the French reign of terror and this was a very optimistic
book which was not M. Condorcet's fate: he was caught and died in a
police cell [Frank E. Manuel, 1962, The Prophets of Paris,
page 59].

Malthus had enough of this positive approach of the French
thinkers! Malthus saw population increasing over time at a geometric
rate: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc. with food increasing over that same
period of time at an arithmetic rate: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. This is what
Darwin began to think about when he opened that notebook for the
Origin in July of 1837. There was a struggle and it was a concept
that appeared in other writings with which Darwin was familiar. Sir
Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology, which had accompanied
Darwin on the HMS Beagle, contained the following:

"In the universal struggle for existence, the right of
the strongest usually prevails; and the strength and durability of
a race depends mainly on its prolificness, in which hybrids are
acknowledged to be deficient" [Cited by R. Keynes, 1983,
"Malthus and Biological Equilibria" in Malthus Past
AndPresent, page 360].

Thomas Huxley himself is quoted as saying that "I cannot but
believe that Lyell was for others, as for me, the chief agent in
smoothing the road for Darwin" [In Miller and Van Loon, 1982,
Darwin For Beginners, page 29] and this has certainly been
echoed in this century:

"Darwin thought of using Hobbes's phrase 'war of nature'
as a heading to his chapter on struggle in his projected 'big
book' Natural Selection. He was [also] acquainted with
Linnaeus's description 'one great slaughter-house the warring
world', and was impressed by the botanist Augustin de Candolle's
similar view of the plant world (1820). Naturalists texts of the
time were replete with the language of the 'struggle for
existence'. Darwin encountered the phrase in works ranging from
von Wrangel's Expedition to the Polar Sea (2nd edn., 1844)
and Edward Blyth's 'Attempt to Classify the Varieties' (1835) to
Malthus's Essay on Population (6th edn, 1826) and Charles
Lyell's milder, equilibristic statement in Principles of
Geology (vol. II, 1832)" [Paul Crook, 1994, Darwinism,
War And History: The Debate Over The Biology Of War From The
'Origin of Species' To The First World War, page 14].

Charles Robert Darwin was intelligent enough to borrow from
numerous intelligent individuals of his times and from numerous
intelligent individuals who worked before him.

INTELLECTUAL CLIMATE: THE CONTEXT OF THE TIMES

While Darwin was gathering his facts and writing in his notebooks,
changes were occurring all over the world: Queen Victoria (1819-1901)
had ascended to the British throne in 1837 and concerning England in
1839, the following has been written:

"It is 1839. England is tumbling towards anarchy, with
countrywide unrests and riots. The gutter presses are fizzing,
fire-bombs-flying. The shout on the streets is for revolution. Red
evolutionists - visionaries who see life marching inexorably
upward, powered from below - denounce the props of an old static
society: priestly privilege, wage exploitation, and the
workhouses. A million socialists are castigating marriage,
capitalism, and the fat corrupted Established Church. Radical
Christians join them, hymn-singing Dissenters who condemn the
'fornicating' Church as a 'harlot,' in bed with the State.

Even science must be purged: for the gutter atheists, material
atoms are all that exist, and like the 'social atoms' - people -
they are self organizing. Spirits and souls are a delusion, part
of the gentry's cruel deceit to subjugate the working people. The
science of life - biology - lies ruined, prostituted, turned into
a Creationist citadel by the clergy. Britain now stands teetering
on the brink of collapse - or so it seems to the gentry, who close
ranks to protect their privileges.

At this moment, how could an ambitious thirty-year old
gentleman open a secret notebook and, with devil-may-care sweep,
suggest that headless hermaphrodite molluscs were the ancestors of
mankind? A squire's son, moreover, Cambridge-trained and once
destined for the cloth. A man whose whole family hated the 'fierce
& licentious' radical hooligans.

The gentleman was Charles Darwin: well heeled,
imperturbably Whig, a privately financed world traveler who had
spent five years aboard HMS Beagle as a dining companion to
the aristocratic captain. He had a private fortune in prospect and
a reputation as an up-and-coming geologist. He also had an
enduring wish to escape 'abominable murky' London, to live in a
rustic parish like his clerical friends, so vilified by the mob"
[STRESS added] [Adrian Desmond and James Moore,
1991, Darwin: The Life Of A Tormented Evolutionist, pages
xvii-xviii].

This was part of the environment in which Darwin was living. The
context of the times is always important in understanding anything.
Earlier I quoted from Tuchman's elegant 1966 publication entitled
The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War 1890-1914
and now I repeat and complete her statement that mankind:

"...entered the Twentieth with his capacities in
transportation, communication, production, manufacturing and
weaponry multiplied a thousandfold by the energy of machines.
Industrial society gave man new powers and new scope while at the
same time building up new pressures in prosperity and poverty, in
growth of population and crowding in cities, in antagonism of
classes and groups, in separation from nature and from
satisfaction in individual work. Science gave man new welfare and
new horizons while it took away belief in God and certainty in a
scheme of things he knew" [Barbara Tuchman, 1966, The Proud
Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War 1890-1914 ,
pages xvi-xvii].

Changes were occurring in various areas while Charles Darwin was
alive. Farmers were increasing their animal yields by means of
selected breeding and new ideas and interpretations of the rôle
of human beings were being circulated and discussed. In England, in
1844, John Henry Newman (1801-1890) began to write down his views,
which were to have an influence on the Christian world and Cardinal
Newman eventually published his Apologia pro Vita Sua (in
1864); Robert Chambers (1802-1883) eventually published (anonymously
at first) Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, "which
played a major role in introducing the British reading public to the
concept of evolution" [Diana Postlethwaite, 1988, "Robert
Chambers" in Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia, page
130].

In addition to research in geology and the natural sciences which
Darwin was well aware of (and which certainly had a bearing on his
times), events were occurring in what could be called "strictly
non-scientific matters" which influenced Darwin's public and private
reception. In religious writing there appeared in Germany in
1835-1836 Leben Jesu by D.F. Strauss, translated into English
in 1846 by the gifted author George Eliot (pseudonym of Marian Evans
Cross [1819-1880]). This translation, entitled The Life of
Jesus, had a tremendous impact on the times, for Strauss "treated
the gospels as myth rather than history." Indeed, in his eminent
publication entitled Darwin, Marx, Wagner: Critique Of A
Heritage, Jacque Barzun has an entry from the Diary of George
Eliot: "November 24 [1859]. A divine day. I walked out and
Mrs. Congreve joined me. Then music, Arabian Nights, and Darwin"
[Jacque Barzun, 1941, Darwin, Marx, Wagner: Critique Of A
Heritage, page 25]. The novel Adam Bede, published in
1859 by Eliot/Evans (and still in print) was, along with many of her
other books (such as Silas Marner in 1861), an outstanding
success!

Not only did Darwin receive "support" or inspiration from Malthus'
ideas on the struggle amongst populations, and Lyell's ideas on
gradual development in geology, but the authority of the Christian
Bible itself was being challenged by independent biblical scholars.
It has been pointed out that Leben Jesu::

"...portrayed Jesus as a remarkable man who happened to
satisfy the messianic hopes of poor and discontented Jews. His
life and deeds as recorded in the New Testament, Strauss
contended, did not portray the actual, historical Jesus but a
mythical Christ whose nature and supernatural powers had been
invented by those who passionately desired a Messiah. While
Strauss did not actually state that the New Testament was untrue,
he did claim that it should not be read as a factual record of
events. Miracles did not happen in the nineteenth century and
neither could they have taken place in the first century" [Lee
E. Guegel, 1979, Society And Religion During The Age Of
Industrialization: Christianity In Victorian England, page
62].

In 1863, Ernest Renan (1823-1892) published an immensely popular
and important volume entitled Vie de Jésus wherein he
stated in his introduction that "The whole of history is
incomprehensible without him [Jesus]." This publication is
very interesting because it:

"...ran into thirteen printings within a year of its
appearance in 1863, followed by fifteen printing of an abridged
popular edition the next year, and which has been translated into
thirteen languages" [M. I. Finley, 1977, Aspects For
Antiquity: Discoveries And Controversies, 2nd edition, page
173].

This work set the tone for an analysis of Christianity in an
historical manner into this century. Although some will write that
Darwin's Origin caused a problem with religious beliefs among
various people ("body blows" is often mentioned), and in the United
States in 1860 Hitchcock and Hitchcock warned readers of their
"high-school textbook that the theory of evolution was 'intended and
adopted to vindicate atheism" [In Edward J. Larson, 1989,
Trial And Error: The American Controversy Over Creation And
Evolution, page 185; citing Hitchcock and Hitchcock, 1860,
Elementary Geology, pages 373-374], religious beliefs seem
to have survived well into this century!

Darwin obviously had no choice for the year of his birth but one
20th Century author has written that "by curious coincidence, the
year 1809 witnessed the births of more extraordinary leaders than
perhaps any other single year in history" [Robert B. Downs, 1956,
Books That Changed The World, page 162]. In 1809, the
aforementioned President Lincoln was born, as well as Tennyson
(1809-1882), Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), and Oliver Wendell Holmes
(1809-1894). Edward Fitzgerald was born in 1809 (1809-1883) as well
as the composer Felix Mendelssohn (18091847), and Ludwig Beethoven
(1770-1827) finished his Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-Flat Major. Such
were some of the intellectual activities around Darwin's time.

Darwin was eventually perceived as a leader and has been called
the "Newton of Biology." It has been written that Origin
"provided a unifying theory for biology in much the same way that
Newton's Principia did for physics" [Fred Wilson, 1991,
Empiricism And Darwin's Science, page xi]. The data that Darwin
collected, the experiments he conducted, and the theories he proposed
influenced a variety of disciplines from anthropology to zoology,
including ecology, geology, and the general social sciences. In
Washington D.C., in 1918, a leading American biologist described
Darwin as that "gentlest and kindest of souls" and that World War I
truly resulted from "the publication of a book called The Origin
of Species" [Paul Crook, 1994, Darwinism, War And History:
The Debate over The Biology Of War From The 'Origin of Species' To
The First World War, page 1]. Darwin had influence!

There have been those who have written that Darwin greatly
influenced those around him and that he brought forth ideas which
were to revolutionize the times from 1859 until this century. On the
other hand, there are those who state that Darwin was but a product
of the times and that "evolutionary ideas" were in the air. Earlier I
mentioned a 20th century author who declared that the "political and
social temper of English life" in Darwin's times was conservative
[Jay E. Greene, 1964, 100 Great Scientists, page 264].
If the truth be known, it was obviously a combination of many
factors. As the 20th century anthropologist, Ashley Montagu, has
stated it, Darwin grew to manhood "in a period during which wars
seemed to be the natural concomitant of living" [Ashley Montagu,
1952, Darwin: Competitition & Cooperation, page 19]
and recently, an impressive publication appeared which argues that
"Darwinism bred an influential tradition of non-violence" and this is
definitely at odds with the war-like interpretation for Darwin
[Paul Crook, 1994, Darwinism, War And History: The Debate over
The Biology Of War From The 'Origin of Species' To The First World
War, page 200]. The debate goes on and perhaps one of the
clearest statements on "context" comes from a 1990 publication by
Peter Bowler entitled Charles Darwin: The Man And His
Influence, wherein he points out the following:

"To visualize Darwin in his own context we must remember
that his contemporaries were unable to appreciate precisely
those aspects of his thinking which seem important today. He
was both a product of his time and a thinker who created an
idea capable of being exploited by later scientists with very
different values. Any attempt to understand Darwin the man must
first take into account the multiple roles that his name has
played within the symbolism of both nineteenth-and
twentieth-century [and soon-to-be 21 century] thought"
[STRESS added].

In Darwin's youth, Britain was warring with France in Portugal and
Spain (1808-1814); Napoleon had been defeated at Waterloo in 1815;
there were wars in the Middle East and Far East (Singapore, Persia,
China), wars in the Crimea (1854-1859), fighting in India, the
American Civil War of 1861-1865, and so on; in short, some could, and
have, successfully argued that it was a miserable time! The
industrial revolution was upon Darwin and it would be described by
one as "the best of times, it was the worst of times" as Charles
Dickens wrote in his own 1859 publication entitled Tale of Two
Cities.

"By the early years of Queen Victoria, the impact of the
growing industrial State on the people could no longer be ignored.
Information was now available in sufficient quality for the true
state of [British and eventually world] affairs to be
realized. because it was now becoming possible for facts and ideas
to be exchanged with ease and rapidity over wide areas. Mechanical
power enabled men to produce the printed word in unlimited
quality. The development and improvement of road-travel by coach
and chaise reached its zenith with the accession of the young
Queen [in 1837], only to be superseded almost at once by
the still more rapid and efficient railway system. ... The
dissemination of fact and news as such was accompanied by the
equally important work of the writers" [R. J. Evans, 1950,
The Victorian Age: 1815-1914, page 87; also, note that "The
first electric telegraph in England was set up between Paddington
and Slough in 1844, and one of its earliest triumphs was to make
possible the apprehension of a criminal on a train between the two
stations" on page 87].

Although this is very positive, the author also pointed out the
following:

"The consequences of the Industrial Revolution and the
Napoleonic Wars falling on English rural life, when that life
itself was undergoing fundamental change, made the twenty years
after Waterloo [fought in 1815] the saddest and most
miserable in the history of the countryside" [R. J. Evans,
1950, The Victorian Age: 1815-1914, page 89].

This, you will remember, is the time when Darwin was growing into
a young man. The author continued:

"Everything conspired against the farmer and the
labourer. Rates and taxes to pay for the war were of crushing
severity, the coming of peace, however welcome in itself, brought
a ruinous drop in prices, and an equally ruinous drop for the time
being in the demand for wheat. Much arable land 'tumbled down' to
pasture, or rather reverted to the wilderness; and the general
technical level of farming dropped all over the country. These
rigorous years eliminated the weaker men, those with little
capital, small ability, or without the vision to look ahead and
adopt new measures to meet new conditions" [R. J. Evans, 1950,
The Victorian Age: 1815-1914, page 89].

The environment was changing!

"Only the vigorous and skillful survived the
storm. As usual, the greatest sufferers were the labourers and
farmhands. At the trials which followed the rick-burning and
riotings of the early 'thirties, the better part of the nation was
horrified at the picture of squalor and abject misery which was
disclosed, and the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, whatever its
ultimate results, had deepened and increased the suffering. The
turn of the tide came about 1840. By that time control was in the
hands of the survivors: intelligent, hard-working, forward looking
men [and women!], who laid the foundation of the 'Golden
Age" of English farming which developed between 1850 and 1875"
[STRESS added] [[R. J. Evans, 1950, The
Victorian Age: 1815-1914, page 105].

The phrase "Nature, red in tooth and claw" came not from Darwin's
pen, but from that of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who also attended
Cambridge over the period 1827-1829. In 1850, the year that Tennyson
became Poet Laureate of England, In Memorium was published and this
is the source of that phrase. It is interesting to read Adams who
wrote in 1989:

"One can easily imagine Tennyson's satisfaction at the
fate of his phrase, 'Nature, red in tooth and claw': a mere six
words have been vested by historians with power to sum up nothing
less than the impact of evolutionary thought on Christian
humanism" [James E. Adams, 1989, "Women Red In Tooth And Claw:
Nature And The Feminine in Tennyson and Darwin" in Victorian
Studies, Vol. 33, No. 1, page 7].

Darwin did not coin the phrase "survival of the fittest" but he
borrowed it from the social thinker and philosopher, Herbert Spencer.
This phrase did not appear in the first edition of Origin in
1859 but was only incorporated for the first time in 1869 in the 5th
edition of Origin. Darwin's times were exciting and Montagu
has some interesting words :

"...it is often assumed that social thought after 1859
was largely the social reflection of Darwin's biology. The truth
is that Darwinian biology was largely influenced by the social and
political thought of the first half of the nineteenth century...."

Montagu stated that Darwin "provided the nineteenth century with a
philosophy of industrial progress" and Darwin was a reflection of his
times.

INTELLECTUAL INSTIGATOR: ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE

Of all the events that occurred over this time period, perhaps the
most important one which galvanized Darwin into finally publishing
his Origin in 1859 was a letter he received in 1858 from
another naturalist, namely Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913). This
letter resulted in the most important publication of Darwin over the
1836-1858 time period, the 1858 joint paper in The Linnaean Society
Papers that Darwin did with Alfred Russel Wallace. This 1858 letter,
however, was not the first Darwin-to-Wallace-to-Darwin interaction
through the mail. They had corresponded earlier in the 1850s when
Wallace was in Malaysia and upon the 1855 publication of Wallace's
article entitled "On the Law which has regulated the Introduction of
New Species" (in The Annals And Magazine Of Natural History).
Sir Charles Lyell promptly sent Darwin the article, continuing to
pressure Darwin into publishing since he (along with Joseph Hooker)
had been warning Darwin that someone might publish before him!

The joint Darwin and Wallace paper (with Darwin as first author)
was entitled "On the tendency of species to form varieties and on the
perpetuation of varieties and species by natural means of selection."
Wallace's own paper was entitled "On the Tendency of Varieties to
Depart Indefinitely From the Original Type." Neither Wallace nor
Darwin were present at the meeting: Wallace was still in Malaysia and
Charles Darwin was in the village of Down, where Emma and Charles
Darwin's child (Charles Waring [1856-1858]) had just died
from scarlet fever. These joint papers were presented on their behalf
by Sir Charles Lyell and Sir Joseph Hooker and actually read by the
Secretary to the assembled society. On this 1858 presentation Sir
Gavin De Beer has written the following:

"On 1 July 1858 Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace
made the first public statement of their theory of evolution by
natural selection before the Linnaean Society of London, and their
papers were published on 20 August of the same year. The
eighteen pages which they covered were among the most pregnant
ever printed, and deserve to rank with those of Isaac Newton,
since they provide for the realm of living beings the first
general principle capable of universal application [stress
added]" (Sir Gavin De Beer, 1958, Charles Darwin And Alfred
Russel Wallace: Evolution By Natural Selection, page 1.)

The evidence is overwhelming that Darwin had been collecting
information on changes within species for numerous years and he
started his serious note-taking on the theory of evolution on
September 28, 1838, "when he wrote down his first clear statement of
the principle of evolution through natural selection [Howard
Gruber, 1974, Darwin On Man: A Psychological Study Of
Creativity, page 261]." It is also very clear that he was
definitely encouraged to speed up his publication schedule because of
Wallace! On Friday, the 18th of June 1858, Charles Darwin received a
letter from Wallace, along with Wallace's manuscript paper entitled
"On the tendency of varieties to depart infinitely from the original
type."

"In the end, Darwin's hesitations [about publishing
his idea on natural selection] were overcome by an
unpredictable turn of events involving Alfred Russel Wallace, a
self-taught naturalist whose life was as shaped by deprivation as
Darwin's was by comfort. ... It was there [in 1848 in the
Malay archipelago, Wallace was] lying in a malarial fever,
that he was suddenly struck with the notion of survival of the
fittest as the mechanism behind adaptation and evolution. He had,
like Darwin, been influenced by reading Malthus, who pointed out
that each species produced far more offspring than could possibly
live. What Wallace saw, then, was that the fittest survived--that
natural selection would benefit those with advantageous
adaptations and would ruthlessly prune out those who lacked them.
Thus could species change; thus could evolution occur. Wallace
wrote out his ideas in a feverish hurry, on two successive
evenings, and decided to send them to Darwin, with whom he had an
on-again-off-again correspondence. Darwin had been kind to him,
treating his with respect and friendliness despite Wallace's
distance from the closely woven fabric of the British scientific
community [STRESS added]" (Pat Shipman, 1994,
The Evolution Of Racism: Human Differences And The Use And
Abuse Of Science, page 29.)

To say that Darwin was shocked to receive this correspondence from
Wallace was an understatement and that very day Darwin wrote to Lyell
wherein he stated: "Your words have come true with a vengeance--that
I should be forestalled." Forced into finally getting some of his
ideas into print, the Darwin and Wallace joint paper of 1858 came
about because of this 1858 letter from Wallace. Nonetheless, Darwin
had been thinking about change since his visit to the
Galápagos Islands in 1835) and when Charles Darwin was fifty
years old, in 1859, the first edition of On The Origin of
Species was published.

ON THE ORIGIN: 1859

In his excellent and outstanding 1967 book entitled The
Language of Science, Savory documents the relationship between
language and the world, tracing the development of "sciences" over
several centuries. Beginning his book with the telling phrase that
"language is the vehicle of ideas," of all of the numerous books of
science that he discusses, Darwin's Origin "stands, of course,
in a class by itself." Savory continues:

"Probably no other book and certainly no other scientific
book, has produced anything like the disturbance in the minds of
its readers, whether they were critics or supporters. It is
difficult today, when the last of the dust of conflict has settled
and the last sound controversy has died away, to recall the
bitterness of that historic battle between prejudice and reason"
[Theodore H. Savory, 1967, The Language of Science,
page 13 and page 161].

It should be clear to the reader of the 20th Century "Web"
document that the "conflict" has not been settled and the
controversy still goes on after 137 years! One can speculate as to
what is possibly being written that is similar to the Origin
today, that might possibly be a point of discussion in the year 2030?
As an academic interested in Darwin, I am definitely looking for to
the year 2009: it will obviously be the Sesquicentennial of the
Origin and the Bicentennial of Darwin's birth!

SOME SPECIFICS

The 1937 Hungarian-American Nobel Prize winner for
Physiology/Medicine, Albert Szent-Györgyi [von
Nagyrapolt], stated that a scientist should "see what everybody
else has seen and then think what nobody has thought" and it has been
written that "nobody did this better than Charles Darwin, who first
realized that the evolution of life took place by Natural Selection"
[J. Livingston and L. Sinclair, 1967, Darwin And The
Galapagos, n.p.]. Numerous other individuals had seen many
similar things that Darwin had seen in his travels, but it was
Charles Darwin who was to "see what everybody else has seen and
then think what nobody has thought." Thomas Huxley, an eminent
scientist in his own right and described at times as "Darwin's
Bulldog" (and whom Darwin affectionately described as his "general
agent" [Leonard Huxley, 1909, Life And Letters Of Thomas Henry
Huxley, Vol. 1, page 183]) was Darwin's good friend and
colleague. Just before Origin was published, Huxley penned
Darwin a note stating "I think you have demonstrated a true cause for
the production of species" and Darwin was greatly relieved when he
received this approval [Cyril Bilby, 1972, Scientist
Extraordinary: The Life And Scientific Work of Thomas Henry Huxley
1825-1895, page 38]. Darwin wrote in his own
Autobiography that the Origin "is no doubt the chief
work of my life" [Nora Barlow, 1958, The Autobiography of
Charles Darwin 1809-1882: With Original Omissions Restored Edited
With An Appendix And Notes By His Grand-Daughter, page
122].

Wallace's 1858 letter, along with the urging of his scientific
associates, "forced" Darwin into print with the Origin, but
the evidence is clear that he had been thinking about the topic for
numerous years and gathering his facts. Once again, in his
Autobiography he wrote:

"The success of the Origin may, I think, be
attributed in large part to my having long before written two
condensed sketches [in 1842 and 1844], and to my having
finally abstracted a much larger manuscript, which was itself an
abstract. By this means I was enabled to select the more striking
facts and conclusions. I had, also, during many years, followed a
golden rule, namely that whenever a published fact, a new
observation or thought came across me, which was opposed to my
general results, to make a memorandum of it without fail and at
once; for I had found by experience that such facts and thoughts
were far more apt to escape from the memory than favourable ones.
Owing to this habit, very few objections were raised against my
views which I had not at least noticed and attempted to answer"
[Nora Barlow, 1958, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin
1809-1882: With Original Omissions Restored Edited With An
Appendix And Notes By His Grand-Daughter, page 123].

Haste is the enemy of research and Charles Darwin took his time;
additional mention of these "two condensed sketches" is made below in
this paper.

Change is also definitely the name of the game when it comes to an
understanding of the works of Charles Darwin (as well as an
understanding of life itself). In 1859 Darwin published the first
edition of On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life
and note the following changes, based on the outstanding 1959
publication of Morse Peckham entitled The Origin Of Species By
Charles Darwin: A Variorum Text, which took place over the SIX
editions of the same volume, from 1859 until 1872:

YEAR/Ed

COPIES

Sentences

Sentences

Sentences

TOTAL

% CHANGE

1859/1st

1,250

3,878

1860/2nd

3,000

9eliminated

483 re-written

30 added

3,899

7 %

1861/3rd

2,000

33 eliminated

617 re-written

266 added

4,132

14 %

1866/4th

1,500

36 eliminated

1073 re-written

435 added

4,531

21 %

1869/5th

2,000

178 eliminated

1770 re-written

227 added

4,580

29 %

1872/6th

3,000

63 eliminated

1699 re-written

571 added

5.088

21-29 %

As previously mentioned, in the 5th edition of 1869 Darwin
utilized the somewhat famous phrase of "Survival of the Fittest"
(borrowed, you will recall, from Herbert Spencer) and by the edition
of 1872, and all subsequent reprints from that edition, the word
"On" was dropped from the title.

It may not even be well known, but Barzun did point out more than
half-a-century ago (in 1941), the following on that somewhat
misinterpreted term, namely "evolution" (that Hitchcock and Hitchcock
, you will recall, were so quick to condemn in the United States in
1860):

"...the word 'evolution' does not occur in the first
edition of the Origin of Species and Darwin did not use it
until some years afterwards. But the idea it denotes had been put
forward and discussed in Europe for at least a hundred years
before 1859" [Jacques Barzun, 1941, Darwin, Marx, Wagner:
Critique Of A Heritage, page 38].

Once again, Charles Darwin took great care NOT to write
about Homo sapiens in Origin in 1859 and all he had to
say about "man" in the volume was:

"In the distant future I see open fields for far more
important researches. Psychology will be based on a new
foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power
and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of
man and his history. [Chapter XV: "Recapitulation And
Conclusion"]

By the 6th edition of Origin in 1872, Darwin had re-written the
above passage as the following:

"In the future I see open fields for far more important
researches. Psychology will be securely based on the foundation
already well laid by Mr. Herbert Spencer, that of the necessary
acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Much
light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.
[Chapter XV: "Recapitulation And Conclusion"]

Charles Darwin did write about Homo sapiens in his
The Descent of Man (first published in 1871) and in the
"Preface" to the 2nd edition of Descent published in 1875, he
commented on "the fiery ordeal through which this book has
passed."

Once again, please remember, even though the term "evolution" is
certainly associated with the name of Charles Darwin, but
Barzun pointed out in 1941 that Darwin did not use the term
"evolution" in the first edition of Origin and Freeman pointed
out in 1965, Darwin actually used the term "evolution" in his The
Descent of Man publication before he used it in
Origin:

"The word evolution occurs for the first time in
all of Darwin's works on page 2 of the first volume of the first
edition [of The Descent of Man], that is to say
before its appearance in the sixth edition of The Origin
Of Species in the following year [STRESS
added]" (R. B. Freeman, 1965, The Works Of Charles Darwin:
An Annotated Bibliographic Handlist, page 29).

This is why I honestly believe dates are important in an
understanding of virtually everything: who influenced whom and when
was it done! In 1981, Darwin's 1871 publication of The Descent of
Man, And Selection In Relation To Sex, was reissued and the
following 20th century words are well worth reading:

"Descent of Man addresses an extraordinary number
of problems that are, at this moment [1981], on the minds
of many biologists, psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists,
and philosophers. It is the genius of Darwin that his ideas,
clothed as they are in unhurried Victorian prose, are almost as
modern now as they were when they were first published" [John
Bonner and Robert May, "Preface" to the Princeton University Press
Edition of 1981, page vii].

Prior to the 1981 reissuance of Darwin's 1871 Descent of
Man, Darwin's 1872 The Expression Of The Emotions In Man And
Animals was reissued in 1965 and words from that 20th century
reprinted volume are also appropriate:

"Darwin had the capacity to see beyond the prejudices
and ideologies of his own time and culture--more so, indeed,
than many who work in these general areas today.... Like all
really great scientific discoveries, Darwin possessed an almost
uncanny ability to reason on the basis of hypotheses which
were not only provisional and vague but also subconscious. .....
The branch of behavior study commonly called ethology, which can
be defined succinctly as the biology of behavior, has a special
right to claim Charles Darwin as its patron saint. ...I believe
that even today we do not quite realize how much Charles Darwin
knew [All STRESS added].

Darwin's various publications were powerful and the intelligent
public of the day read them. Darwin carried on a tremendous amount of
correspondence with various scientists of his times (perhaps akin to
Internet surfing today). These scientists provided him with a great
deal of information and they were clearly his intellectual
supporters:

"The penny post service, introduced in 1840, was very
efficient, allowing him to interact with many individuals and
institutions at arm's length. He joined a number of breeder clubs
and built up an unrivaled network of communication with people who
could supply him with practical information on the subjects of
variation and heredity" (Peter J. Bowler, 1990, Charles Darwin:
The Man And His Influence, page 95).

The question should be raised, what made Origin of 1859
such a controversial (and popular) publication since Darwin did not
write of human beings perse? What Darwin simply did
was to (a) gather a tremendous amount of information,
(b) think about his information and the implications of his
research, and (c) write carefully. This is a point admirably
made by Campbell, who wrote in 1974:

"One need not read far in any of Darwin's works to see
that one of the most striking aspects of Darwin's emotional
response is his manner of describing the natural world. The
language of Darwin's descriptions betrays a relationship with the
objects of his study that is personal and affective. In his
earliest work his praise of nature is expectedly exuberant" (John
A. Campbell, 1974, "Nature, Religion And Emotional Response: A
Reconsideration of Darwin's Affective Decline" in Victorian
Studies, Vol. 18, No. 2, pages 159-174, pages 161-162).

Darwin demonstrated (with an immense amount of data that every
educated person of the times could comprehend) that while human
beings consciously practice domestic selection, nature practices
natural selection. Natural selection meant that the population which
is best adapted to the environment, be it bird or plant or
domesticated horse or cow or pig, survives. Those which survive pass
on their characteristics to their offspring or the next generation;
remember, Darwin did not know about genes and Gregor Mendel
(1822-1884) the proof of his reasoning was not to come for many
years.

Please remember that nature is neutral whereas culture is
not. "Natural Selection" is a neutral phenomena but writing about
natural selection is a cultural (and hence a "biased") phenomena.
This is why the following statement, taken from a 1994 publication
entitled Evidence of Purpose: Scientists Discover The Creator is such
a ludicrous and judgmental (hence "biased") statement: "The final
chapter in the evolution of life is the most profound of
all--the origin of humankind [STRESS added]." Please
note that the author did not write of a "current chapter" or the
"present chapter" but of the FINALCHAPTER! I speculate
as to what anthropologists or theologians will view as their "final
chapter in the evolution of life" in ten years, or 100 years, or in
one-thousand years?! This 1994 statement on evolution was a
culturally-biased statement whereas the 1859 Origin of Darwin
is a neutral statement about natural selection.

Darwin presented evidence, in a well-written and often
metaphorical manner, about natural selection and he also had
statements concerning a "Creator" in Origin. You will recall,
as pointed out above, that Darwin also wrote of a "God of Nature" in
his 1839 The Voyage of the Beagle. Concerning a "Creator" that
Darwin mentioned in the second edition (and all subsequent editions
of Origin in his lifetime), if you read his words you will see that
in Chapter XV of the Origin, in the chapter entitled
"Recapitulation And Conclusion" that in the very last paragraph of
the book he wrote:

"Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the
most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely,
the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There
is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers,
having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few
forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling
on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a
beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have
been, and are being evolved [STRESS added]."
[Chapter XV: "Recapitulation And Conclusion"

This was not the sole reference to "the Creator" that
Darwin made in Origin, for one may read his earlier words in
Origin:

"He who believes in separate and innumerable acts of
creation may say, that in these cases it has pleased the
Creator to cause a being of one type to take the place of
one belonging to another type; but this seems to me only
re-stating the fact in dignified language. He who believes in the
struggle for existence and in the principle of natural selection,
will acknowledge that every organic being is constantly
endeavouring to increase in numbers; and that if any one being
varies ever so little, either in habits or structure, and thus
gains an advantage over some other inhabitant of the same country,
it will seize on the place of that inhabitant, however different
that may be from its own place [STRESS added] .
[Chapter VI: Difficulties of The Theory]

"It is scarcely possible to avoid comparing the eye with a
telescope. We know that this instrument has been perfected by the
long-continued efforts of the highest human intellects; and we
naturally infer that the eye has been formed by a somewhat
analogous process. But may not this inference be presumptuous?
Have we any right to assume that the Creator works by
intellectual powers like those of man?" [STRESS added]
[Chapter VI: Difficulties of The Theory]

"The foregoing remarks lead me to say a few words on the
protest lately made by some naturalists, against the utilitarian
doctrine that every detail of structure has been produced for the
good of its possessor. They believe that many structures have been
created for the sake of beauty, to delight man or the Creator
(but this latter point is beyond the scope of scientific
discussion), or for the sake of mere variety, a view already
discussed [STRESS added]." [Chapter VI:
Difficulties of The Theory]

"But many naturalists think that something more is meant by the
Natural System; they believe that it reveals the plan of the
Creator; but unless it be specified whether order in time
or space, or both, or what else is meant by the plan of the
Creator, it seems to me that nothing is thus added to our
knowledge [STRESS added]." [Chapter XIV: Mutual
Affinities Of Organic Beings: Morphology: Embryology: Rudimentary
Organs]

"On the ordinary view of the independent creation of each
being, we can only say that so it is; that it has pleased the
Creator to construct all the animals and plants in each
great class on a uniform plan; but this is not a scientific
explanation [STRESS added]." [Chapter XIV:
Mutual Affinities Of Organic Beings: Morphology: Embryology:
Rudimentary Organs]

I encourage the electronic reader of this paper to go to the
various sites on the web that have various texts and, after you
ascertain just which "edition" of Origin you might have,
please check the "Creator" references out yourselves! Please note the
explicit words of Charles R. Darwin: "but this is not a scientific
explanation" and the "point is beyond the scope of scientific
discussion" and, initially, "Have we any right to assume that the
Creator works by intellectual powers like those of man?"
[4]

Charles R. Darwin was not lacking in
faith; the faith that he held, however, was that of a scientist:
there are some things which are simply not knowable and let us go on
to what we can try and understand! Perhaps we should consider the
words of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968) who stated
it well in this century: "Science investigates; religion
interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion
gives man wisdom which is control."

Darwin was not an atheist who rejected all religious
beliefs and denied the existence of God; he was, however,
unwilling to accept supernatural (culturally biased) explanations for
the natural (neutral) world of nature that observed all around him
and he wrote that "this is not a scientific explanation." Perhaps
Darwin should have quoted the words of the Scottish historian and
essayist, Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881): "I don't pretend to understand
the Universe - it's a great deal bigger than I am . . . People ought
to be modester" or Darwin could have chosen a philosophy from
elsewhere in the world, for it is written that a Shinto saying is
"belief is for mortals, proof is for the Gods." In his 1876
Autobiography, Darwin wrote that at the time of Origin
he could be viewed as a theist, or one who had the conviction of the
existence of God. Ideas and perspectives change over time and in 1876
Darwin stated:

"It has very gradually with many fluctuations become
weaker. ... I cannot pretend to throw the least light on such
abstruse problems [as the existence of God]. The mystery
of the beginning of all things is impossible by us; and I for one
must be content to remain an agnostic (S.E. Hyman, 1963, Darwin
For Today, page 371).

Darwin was not an atheist but an agnostic, a term coined in 1869
by his aforementioned good friend and scientific associate, Thomas
Henry Huxley. An agnostic is defined as "a person who believes that
the human mind cannot know whether there is a God or an ultimate
cause, or anything beyond material phenomena" and Darwin's philosophy
was a problem for his wife Emma, who maintained a deep orthodox
religious conviction throughout her life; his agnostic beliefs did
"make her sad" and uneasy for his sake (G. De Beer, 1964, Charles
Darwin: Evolution By Natural Selection, page 269).

It is unfortunate to read others who quote Darwin and (who
at times) quote him so badly for their own purposes. Consider an
article which appeared in 1982 (in the now defunct) Science
magazine entitled "On the Life of Mr. Darwin," written by a
"Contributing Editor." After presenting an interesting "interview"
with Darwin, the "editor" concluded with the following quote:

"There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its
several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms
or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on
according to the fixed laws [sic.] of gravity, from
so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most
wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

Not only did Bingham not cite Darwin's specific reference
to the "Creator" but he also pluralized the "law" of gravity into
many laws! If one is familiar with Darwin, one notes the difference.
In a 1993 publication, even the indefatigable Stephen Jay Gould saw
fit to quote Darwin's Origin as follows:

"And I remembered that Charles Darwin had drawn the very
same contrast in the final lines of the Origin of Species.
When asking himself, in one climactic paragraph, to define the
essence of the differences between life and the inanimate cosmos,
Darwin chose the directional character of evolution vs. the cyclic
repeatability of our clockwork solar system [and Gould then
quotes the following from Darwin]: 'There is a grandeur in
this view of life.... [these "...." are placed by Gould in his
quote, which continues as follows] Whilst this planet has gone
cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a
beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have
been, and are being, evolved.'" (Stephen J. Gould, 1993, Shoemaker
And Morning Star. Eight Little Piggies: Reflections In Natural
History , pp. 206-217, pages 216-217.)

Gould must have had a reason for not mentioning Darwin's
reference to the "Creator" (remember, added by Darwin himself in the
second edition of 1860), but it is not obvious to the casual
reader. Throughout this paper, I have attempted to stress the
basic humanity of Darwin, a point others have also noted; I also
stress the importance of reading items for yourself and
forming your own opinions! Do your own research and go back to the
"original" whenever possible and not to what some "commentator" says
about the "original" (even though that commentator be Gould or
Urbanowicz or ....). Darwin was human and was:

"...very sensitive to criticism, and tried hard to
satisfy all his critics by making appropriate alterations and
accommodating conflicting points of view. This process is far more
evident in Origin, where the first edition nowadays seems
much superior to the sixth and last edition" (John Bonner and
Robert May, 1981, "Preface" in Charles Darwin, The Descent of
Man And Selection In Relatiuon To Sex, page xxxv).

In reading Darwin, which "Darwin are you reading?" Origin
is readily available, but what edition of Origin do you have?
Darwin took his critics to heart and the various revisions in
Origin (for example) have been documented above:

"...in response to numerous criticisms Darwin undertook
constant revisions between the book's first appearance in 1859 and
the sixth edition of 1872. The later editions thus differ
considerably from the first, and the last edition contains an
additional chapter (chapter 7) dealing with objections to the
theory. These changes tend to obscure the original argument and
the first edition is thus by far the clearest expression of
Darwin's insight [STRESS added] (Peter J. Bowler,
1990, Charles Darwin: The Man And His Influence, page 144).

Please read and think carefully.

At the beginning of this section, reference was made to the two
sketches of 1842 and 1844 which had been read by individuals at the
time they were first written (thus proving Darwin's precedence over
Wallace by some sixteen years). Such "sketches" in their own right
were massive publications and, concerning the second sketch, Darwin
wrote to Emma on 5 July 1844: "I have just finished my sketch of my
species theory. If, as I believe, my theory in time be accepted by
even one competent judge, it will be a considerable step in scienc"
(Nora Barlow, 1958, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809-1882:
With Original Omissions Restored Edited With An Appendix And Notes By
His Grand-Daughter, page 35). The first edition of Origin
was published relatively quickly in 1859, after the Wallace letter of
1858, because Darwin had already accomplished most of the writing!
The purpose of this current WWW paper is not to compare line-by-line
various publications of Darwin, but to get the reader to (a)
think about various things (and antecedents to Charles Darwin)
and (b) please consider the following "Conclusion" to the 1842
sketch:

"Such are my reasons for believing that specific forms
are not immutable. ... There is a simple grandeur in this view
of life with its powers of growth, assimilation and
reproduction, being originally breathed into matter under one or a
few forms, and that whilst this planet has gone circling on
according to fixed laws, and land and water, in a cycle of change,
have gone on replacing each other, that from so simple an origin,
through the process of gradual selection of infinitesimal changes,
endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been evolved
[STRESS added]."

Sound familiar? Or consider the concluding words from 1844 and
compare some of them with the Origin of 1859:

"My reasons have now been assigned for believing that
specific forms are not immutable creations. ... From death,
famine, and the struggle for existence, we see that the most
exalted end which we are capable of conceiving, namely the
creation of the higher animals, has directly proceeded.
Doubtless, our first impression is to disbelieve that any
secondary law could produce infinitely numerous organic beings,
each characterized by the most exquisite workmanship and widely
extended adaptations: it at first accords better with our
faculties to suppose that each required the fiat of a
Creator. There is a [simple] grandeur in this view of
life with its several powers of growth, reproduction and of
sensation, having been originally breathed into matter under a few
forms, perhaps into only one, and that whilst this planet has
gone cycling onwards according to the fixed laws of gravity and
whilst land and water have gone on replacing each other--from so
simple an origin, through the selection of infinitesimal
varieties, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have
been evolved [STRESS added]. (Sir Gavin De Beer,
1958, Charles Darwin And Alfreed Russel Wallace: Evolution By
Natural Selection, pages 253-254. Please note that in the
extensive quote above, the bracketed "[simple]" appeared
which meant that "words so enclosed are erased in the original MS"
(De Beer, 1958, page 41).

Charles R. Darwin did his research and thought about what he was
writing. As Campbell has written:

"By conveying a sense of wonder in the language of his
scientific observations, Darwin humanizes knowledge through
emotion. Though his purpose is to communicate scientific
observations and not affective response, his language nevertheless
is a vehicle through which he affirms the claims of our humanity
on our knowledge" (John A. Campbell, 1974, "Nature, Religion And
Emotional Response: A Reconsideration of Darwin's Affective
Decline" in Victorian Studies, Vol. 18, No. 2, pages
159-174, page 173; also see Walker Gibson, 1958, "Behind The Veil:
A Distinction Between Poetic And Scientific Language In Tennyson,
Lyell, And Darwin" in Victorian Studies, pages 60-68, page
68, as he writes about Darwin's "wonderful piece of writing" in
his Voyage publication.

THE GREAT DEBATE

It is clear from numerous accounts that "both Huxley and Darwin
knew the animosity and vehemence that Darwin's theory might--and
did--arouse" (Pat Shipman, 1994, The Evolution of Racism: Human
Differences And The Use And Abuse Of Science, page 53). Darwin
was essentially confined to his home at Down as a result of his
illness from his South American research and he really did not take
part in the great public and scientific debates that came about with
the publication of Origin. In June of 1860, the British Association
for the Advancement of Science held its annual meeting at Oxford
University. At the meeting, in addition to numerous scholarly papers,
Professor Daubney (Botany) presented a paper with the title of "On
the Final Causes of the Sexuality of Plants, With Particular
Reference to Mr. Darwin's Work on Origin of Species" and it
was well-received, but a debate was due.

Huxley was in attendance at the meetings and was all set to leave,
but he was encouraged by Robert Chambers, 1844 author of The
Vestiges of Creation, to stay until Saturday, June 30th, when a
paper was to be presented by Dr. Draper (from New York, USA) entitled
"On the Intellectual Development of Europe Considered With Reference
to the Views of Mr. Darwin." Described as being "duly and dully
delivered" to an audience of over 700 individuals in the West Room of
the Oxford Museum, the paper was politely received, but more
discussion was desired. In attendance in this crowd of 700, in
addition to Thomas Huxley, was none other than the Reverend Samuel
Wilberforce (1805-1873), who was the Bishop of Oxford.

The Reverend Wilberforce was a Fellow of the Royal Society and a
knowledgeable individual in his own right. He had reviewed
Origin for the London Quarterly Review in 1860 and
while he began the review by writing about Darwin's scientific
attainments, his insight and carefulness as an observer, and his
clear and lively writing style, Wilberforce ultimately described the
1859 Origin as "the most illogical book ever written" and, on
another occasion, "the most unphilosophical work he ever read" (R.B.
Freeman, 1978, Charles Darwin: A Companion, page 303; also see
S. Wilbeforce, "Review" in Darwinism: Critical Reviews....,
pages 93-132, Edited by Daniel N. Robinson), page 93). On the 30th of
June, after Dr. Draper's presentation, the Reverend Samuel
Wilberforce was invited to speak to the crowd and for thirty minutes
he spoke his opinion about the foolishness of Darwin's approach.
Wilberforce was well-received by the crowd but unfortunately for the
good Prelate, he ended his presentation with a fatal error by making
a personal inquiry into Huxley's ancestry: turning to face Huxley,
and with apparent smiling insolence Wilberforce asked "was it through
his grandfather or his grandmother that he [Huxley] claimed
descent from a monkey?" (Ashely Montagu, Editor, 1974, Frontiers
of Anthropology, page 178). An observer present at that meeting
wrote how the Reverend Wilberforce spoke for his thirty minutes "with
inimitable spirit, emptiness and unfairness" and when Huxley heard
Wilberforce's insolent question, he turned to his companion next to
him and stated "The Lord hath delivered him into mine hands." Huxley
waited until he was invited to speak, and he rose and gave his
statement. Nine weeks after the event, Thomas Huxley wrote to a
colleague about the event:

"It was great fun--I had said that I could not see what
difference it would make to my moral responsibility if I had an
ape for a grandfather, and saponaceous Samuel thought it was a
fine opportunity for chaffing a savan. However he performed the
operation vulgarly & I determined to punish him--partly on
that account & partly because he talked pretentious nonsense.
So when I got up I spoke pretty much to the effect--that I had
listened with great attention to the Lord Bishop's speech but had
been unable to discover either a new fact or a new argument in
it--except indeed, the question raised as to my personal
predilections in the matter of ancestry--that it would not have
occurred to me to bring forward such a topic as that for
discussion myself, but that I was quite ready to meet the Right
Rev. prelate even on that ground--If then, said I, the question
is put to me would I rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather
or a man highly endowed by nature and possessed of great means
& influence & yet who employs those faculties & that
influence for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a
grave scientific discussion--I unhesitatingly affirm my preference
for the ape. Whereupon there was inextinguishable laughter
among the people--and they listened to the rest of my argument
with the greatest of attention. Lubbock & Hooker spoke after
me with great force . . [STRESS added]" (Cyril
Bibby, 1972, Scientist Extraordinary: The Life And Scientific
Work Of Thomas Henry Huxley 1825-1895, page 40).

Huxley was well-received and the public debate on evolution of
species went on for years and continues to this date. It should be
pointed out, however, that not everyone was pleased with Huxley's
remarks for it was reported:

"...when the Bishop of Worcester told his wife what had
happened [at Oxford that day], she is said...to have
replied, 'Descended from the apes! My dear, let us hope that it is
not true, but if it is, let us pray that it will not become
generally known" (Cyril Bibby, 1972, Scientist Extraordinary:
The Life And Scientific Work Of Thomas Henry Huxley 1825-1895,
page 41).

Remember, once again, that Charles R. Darwin did not write about
Homo sapiens per se in the 1859 publication of Origin,
but the implications were clearly there:

"The idea that evolution by natural selection could
account for the origin of man was taken up by others as a direct
result of Darwin's ideas. The respected T.H. Huxley did this
explicitly in 1863 in his Evidence As To Man's Place In Nature
" (John Bonner and Robert May, 1981, "Preface" in Charles
Darwin, The Descent Of Man And Selection In Relation To Sex
[0riginal in 1871], page xi).

Prior to Origin, Darwin learned that the distinguished
anatomist Richard Owen (1804-1892), an individual who become a
staunch anti-Darwinist (and supporter of Bishop Wilberforce), had
"raised Man to a distinct subclass at the head of creation," Darwin
had this to say: "I wonder what a chimpanzee would say to this?
[5 July 1857]" (In Adrian Desmond, 1979, The Ape's
Reflexion, page 11).

"In the Origin Darwin tried to avoid extending his
biological explanations into social and moral questions, but the
extension was unavoidable and he made it himself in The Descent
of Man. From the start Darwinism made the human a part of the
natural world and subject to scientific analysis" (George Levin,
1988, Darwin And The Novelists: Patterns Of Science In
Victorian Fiction, pages 85-86).

Change was definitely the name of the game in Origin,
change as well as the accumulation of data. Earlier it had pointed
that some 25,500 copies of Origin had been published in
Britain by the time of Darwin's death in 1882. Darwin himself wrote
the following, that by 1876, Origin had been:

"...translated into almost every European tongue, even
into such languages as Spanish, Bohemian, Polish, and Russian. ...
Even an essay in Hebrew has appeared on it, showing that the
theory is contained in the Old Testament! The reviews were very
numerous; for a time I collected all that appeared on the Origin
and on my related books, and these amount (excluding newspaper
reviews) to two hundred and sixty-five; but after a time I gave up
the attempt in despair. ... The success of the Origin may,
I think, be attributed in large to my having long before written
two condensed sketches and to my finally having abstracted a much
larger manuscript, which was itself an abstract. By this means I
was enabled to select the more striking facts and conclusions. I
had also, during many years, followed a golden rule, namely, that
whenever a published fact, a new observation, or thought came
across me which was opposed to my general results, to make a
memorandum of it without fault and at once; for I had found by
experience that such facts and thoughts were fare more apt to
escape from the memory than favorable ones. Owing to this habit,
very few objections were raised against my views which I had not
at least noticed and attempted to answer" (Stanley E. Hyman,
1963, Darwin For Today, pages 389-390).

Change, or the willingness to accept changes and deal with changes
in interpretations was also evident in the individuals that Darwin
associated with: from Lyell's geological changes to Huxley's ability
to deal with change. Consider the following words from Huxley's now
classic "Evolution and Ethics" lecture delivered on May 18, 1893:

"And the more we learn of the nature of things, the
more evident is it that what we call rest is only unperceived
activity; that seeming peace is silent but strenuous battle.
In every part, at every moment, the state of the cosmos is the
expression of a transitory adjustment of contending forces; a
scene of strife, in which all the combatants fall in turn. What is
true of each of the parts, is true of the whole. Natural
knowledge tends more and more to the conclusion that 'all the
choirs of heaven and furniture of the earth' are the transitory
forms of parcels of cosmic substance wending along the road of
evolution, from nebulous potentiality, through endless growths
of sun and planet and satellite; through all varieties of matter;
through infinite diversities of life and thought; possibly,
through modes of being which we have neither a conception, nor are
competent to form any, back to the indefinable latency from which
they arose. Thus the most obvious attribute of the cosmos is
its impermanence. It assumes the aspect not so much of a
permanent entity as of a changeful process, in which naught
endures save the flow of energy and the rational order which
pervades it " [STRESS added] (Thomas Henry Huxley,
reprinted in James Paradis and Georger C. Williams, 1989,
Evolution & Ethics: T.H. Huxley's Evolution And Ethics With
New Essays On Its Victorian And Sociobiological Context, pages
104-177, pages 107-108).

Please note that the authors of this book point out that Huxley
wrote the essays for Evolution And Ethics" "in imitation of Malthus
for precisely the reasons that Malthus had written An Essay On The
Principles Of Population (1978)--to refute...." (pages 6-7).
Nothing develops out of nothing and all intellectual events
are cumulative!

This is similar to the point introduced earlier which I will
re-state here: in the 1990s, what we suffer from is not the "feeling"
that "change is occurring too rapidly" but we suffer from failing to
make changes in our interpretations of change! I believe that change
is a constant but our ability to deal with change can fall further
and further behind unless we work at keeping our interpretations
current and flexible; we must avoid "hardening of our categories!"
Change is the natural order of things and as stated above, we should
re-consider the 1991 words of Richard Lee Marks (writing in Three
Men Of The Beagle) who had the following:

"Nowadays, when you can jet from New York to Buenos Aires
to Ushuaia with a stop-over in Comodoro Rivadavia, all within
twenty-four hours (if your connections are excellent), you may
still stand there on the shore looking across the gray-green water
of the Beagle Channel at Navarin Island--but you may be less
respectful of the strangeness and your mind-set may be more
intractable, less susceptible to the great question of human
existence [STRESS added]" [R.L. Marks, 1991,
Three Men Of The Beagle, pages 5-6].

How would Darwin change if he were to publish Origin right
now? What would he do the same? I think that Darwin would still
advocate traveling and getting wide experiences in a variety of areas
and obtaining a liberal and broad-ranging education. I also think
that Darwin would strongly advocate a word processor! I think that he
would stress the importance of thinking in terms of populations and
in thinking in terms of the range of variation within a given
population. I believe that Darwin would continue to stress the
environment and adaptation to the environment. As the 20th century
anthropologist Gregory Bateson once remarked: "The unit of survival
[or adaptation] is organism plus environment. We are learning
by bitter experience that the organism which destroys its environment
destroys itself" (Gregory Bateson, 1972, Steps To An Ecology Of
Mind, page 483).

Darwin would probably do some things differently and some things
the same but he would definitely incorporate information on genetics
and Deoxyribonucleic research into a 1990s Origin. A 20th
century jazz musician made the following statement which is
interesting to consider in light of Darwin: Charlie Mingus said
"Anybody can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the
complicated simple." I, and numerous others, believe that Darwin was
creative; and he also came up with a simple principle to deal with
observable data: evolution by natural selection. In 1958, Loren
Eisely wrote a book entitled Darwin's Century: Evolution And The
Men Who Discovered It and he had an intriguing chapter entitled
"The Priest Who Held The Key To Evolution (pages 205-231)" pointing
out the 1865 work of Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) that Darwin (nor
anyone else!) knew about, but that is another story! Trying to
summarize pre-1859 and post-1859 opinions of biology, the following
chart (after W.S. Laughlin and R.H. Osborn, Editors, 1967, Human
Variation And Origins: An Introduction To Biology And Evolution)
is useful:

"Original Types" before 1859

Breeding Populations after 1859

Variation before 1859: Deviations from type

Variation after 1859: Natural Selection

Inheritance before 1859: Blending

Inheritance after 1859: Eventually Mendel

"Units" before 1859: "Great Chain of Being"

Units after 1859: Variable populations

Time Depth before 1859: Recent

Time Depth after 1859: Geological Eras

COMMENTS AND SEMI-CONCLUDING REMARKS

Jacques Barzun (1907-) gave his 1941 publication the title of
Darwin, Marx, Wagner: Critique of A Heritage. Origin,
of course, was first published in 1859, but also in that year the
German composer Wagner completed the score for his Tristan And
Isolde and the German author Karl Marx (living in England)
published his Critique of Political Economy (January 1859) and
began his first words for Das Kapital (subsequently published
in 1867). One has written that Karl Marx "venerated" Darwin and
called himself a "sincere admirer" of his work; Marx wished to
dedicate the English translation of Volume two of Das Kapital
to Darwin, but this was a request which Darwin "courteously refused"
since Charles Darwin did not wish to imply approval of a work he had
not read (Julian Huxley and H.B.D, Kettlewell, 1965, Charles
Darwin And His World, poage 80). In fact, in 1880, Darwin wrote
the following to Marx:

"It seems to me (rightly or wrongly) that direct
arguments against Christianity and Theism hardly have any effect
on the public; and that freedom of thought will best be promoted
by that gradual enlightening of human understanding which follows
the progress of science. I have therefore always avoided
writing about religion and have confined myself to science"
[STRESS added] (cited in S.J. Gould, 1977, Ever
Since Darwin: Reflections In Natural History, pages 26-27).

Why do we do what we do? How do we come to do it? Darwin's friend,
Thomas Huxley, wrote upon the occasion of the 1859 publication of
Origin that "How exceedingly stupid not to have thought of
that" (in Cyril Bibby, 1972, Scientist Extraordinary: The Life And
Scientific Work Of Thomas Henry Huxley 1825-1895, page 38); and
someone else (Samuel Butler [1835-1902]), in perhaps a less
kindly manner, wrote the following: "Buffon planted, Erasmus Darwin
and Lamarck watered, but it was Mr. Darwin who said 'That fruit is
ripe,' and shook it into his lap" (Gertrude Himmelfarb, 1959,
Darwin And The Darwinian Revolution, page 448).

Perhaps Loren Eiseley (1907-1977) has stated it with less bias:
"Charles Darwin, like every other worker in the field of science,
used the knowledge and the accumulated stores of information of his
predecessors" (Loren Eiseley, 1979, Darwin And The Mysterious Mr.
X, page 74). Eiseley continued with the following: "To their
efforts he added his own vast resources and the originality of a
powerful, far-reaching mind." Darwin approached his world with an
open mind and with his training and experience, he searched for
answers to questions. Other individuals of his time were experiencing
"not the shock of discovery but rather the shock of recognition"
(Gertrude Himmelfarb, 1959, Darwin And The Darwinian
Revolution, page 448).

So much data was being gathered, so many other individuals were
thinking along similar lines, that Darwin's work fit quite right in
with the current intellectual and scientific discussions and debates
of the day. Indeed, one may examine publications such as Eiseley's
own 1958 publication as well as a 1959 volume edited by Bentley Glass
et al., entitled Forerunners of Darwin: 1745-1859, to
see the amount of information and interpretations that preceded the
Origin of 1859. Individuals such as Wallace, Lamarck, Buffon,
and Lyell are discussed, as well as Erasmus Darwin, Cuvier, Diderot
(of Encyclopédie fame), Robert Chambers, Kant, and
others! After Darwin, we see Mendel, as well as theories of Social
Darwinism, Eugenics, and much more! In an book published in 1991,
entitled In Search Of Human Nature: The Decline And Revival Of
Darwinism in American Social Thought, Degler has the
following:

"The concept of evolution, which seems so obvious to us
today, emerged only in the eighteenth century. Immanuel Kant's
assertion that the universe was the product of slow change over
eons of time was among the earliest examples of an evolutionary
outlook. Another was the recognition by geologists that the earth,
too, had a history, that it had not always been as it appeared.
Once there had been mountains where there were plains, seas where
deserts now stood. Others applied the idea of slow change over
time to living nature, seeing an evolution of animals from simple
to complex forms. Among such proponents was Erasmus Darwin, the
grandfather of Charles. In more way than one, in short, Charles
Darwin's work is best seen as the culmination rather than the
initiation of a line of thought that saw evolutionary change in
man and nature. Yet simply because Darwin was the culmination, he
shaped men's thinking about evolution and man's relations to
animals. He rephrased, as no one before him, what it meant to be
human" [STRESS added] (Carl N. Degler, 1991, Search
Of Human Nature: The Decline And Revival Of Darwinism In American
Social Thought, pages 5-6).

As previously mentioned, by 1876, Origin had been:
"translated into almost every European tongue, even into such
languages as Spanish, Bohemian, Polish, and Russian" and as the title
of the aforementioned 1991 Degler publication pointed out (Search
Of Human Nature: The Decline And Revival Of Darwinism In American
Social Thought), Darwin influenced American social thought: he
"set the framework within which American social scientists of the
late nineteenth century pursued their effort to understand human
behavior" (Carl N. Degler, 1991, Search Of Human Nature: The
Decline And Revival Of Darwinism In American Social Thought,
pages 5-6). An American reaction to Origin of 1859 did not
develop as rapidly as the European reaction (primarily since the
Huxley-Wilberforce debate of 1860 focussed the discussions in
Europe), but it did develop. Cynthia Eagle Russett points out this
eventual development in her 1976 publication entitled Darwin In
America: The Intellectual Response 1865-1912. Certainly Darwin
(or was it Herbert Spencer?) influenced a wide range of American
thinkers, such as William James (1842-1910) and Thorstein Veblen
(1857-1929), but that is yet another story! In 1944, Richard
Hofstadter published Social Darwinism In American Thought and
his fifty-two year old statement is as true and relevant today as it
was in 1944:

"When Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species
dawned upon the world it aroused no such immediate furor in the
United States as it did in England. A public sensation comparable
to that stirred up in England by Huxley's famous clash with
Wilberforce in June 1860 was impossible in America, where a
critical election was beginning whose results would disrupt the
Union and bring about a terrible Civil War. Although the first
American edition of The Origin of Species was widely reviewed in
1860, the coming of the war obscured new developments in
scientific thought for all but professional scientists and a few
hardy intellectuals" (Richard Hofstadter, 1944, Social
Darwinism In American Thought, page 13).

The debate continues to this date on a wide range of
"Darwin-related" matters, and this brief paper certainly cannot cover
everything that is currently going on; however, your attention is
called to the following statement from Norman Macbeth's interesting
1971 repudiation of "Classical Darwinism" entitled Darwin Retried:
An Appeal To Reason, and Macbeth's extremely cogent and important
words:

"One who makes a close study of almost any branch of
science soon discovers the great illusion of the monolith.
When he [or she] stood outside as an uninformed layman, he
got a vague impression of the unanimity among the professionals.
He tended to think of science as supporting an Establishment with
fixed and approved views. All this dissolves as he works his
way into the living concerns of practicing scientists. He finds
lively personalities who indulge in disagreement, disorder,
and disrespect. He [and she!] must sort out conflicting
opinions and make up his own mind as to what is correct and
who is sound" [STRESS added] ((Norman Macbeth,
1971, Darwin Retried: An Appeal To Reason, page 18).

I have come to certain conclusions pertaining to Darwin's
intellectual history, his thought patterns, his "feelings" at the
time, and his influence on our times. Et tu dear reader?
[5]

SPECIFIC COMMENTS

Between Darwin's publication of Origin in 1859 and the five
revisions of Origin, and the publication of his Descent of
Man in 1871(and other publications by Charles Darwin), numerous
events occurred which had an influence on the intellectual reception
of Darwin; indeed, the 1859 translated words of The
Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám might apply to
Charles Darwin's 1859 publication of the Origin:

The 1860 meeting at Oxford has already been mentioned but note
also that in that year, seven English Churchmen also published an
item entitled Essays and Reviews, wherein certain orthodox
religious doctrines were questioned. In addition, in the 1860s and
1870s other events occurred to almost make Darwin's ideas almost
passéwhile he was still alive!

"In 1862 Bishop Colenso started to publish his doubts
about the Pentateuch. In 1863 Sir Charles Lyell produced his
evidence on the antiquity of man, which seemed to be inconsistent
with the account of creation in the Bible. In 1863 Renan's
humanizing Vie de Jésus appeared. In 1865 J. R.
Seeley of Cambridge published another humanizing work on Christ
called Ecce Homo. In 1870 the British Association at Exeter
generally accepted evolution. [AND] In 1871 Darwin
published his Descent of Man. Thus in these ten to twelve
years orthodox religion received a series of body blows, which
seemed to be aimed at its existence" (G. Kitson Clark, 1967, An
Expanding Society: Britain In 1830-1900, pp. 95-96).

When Descent of Man was published in 1871, the
"controversy" was almost over in Darwin's time! A 1984 author had a
nice summary statement of Darwin's 1871 publication:

"Despite its more explicitly materialistic interpretation
of man's essence, Descent was not met with the rancor that
earlier had engulfed Origin . In barely more than a
decade the concept of evolution--even human evolution--had become
installed as a familiar feature on the landscape of popular ideas.
If the scientific community's judgment of the work did not
always convey unbridled admiration, rarely did it concede less
than sober respect. The reviews of Descent were for the most part
favorable (Mivart's aside, of course), and the tone of criticism
politely muted. A number of reviewers took the occasion to
deliver the satisfying news that science posed no threat to
religion after all [STRESS added] (Kenneth Korey,
1984, The Essential Darwin, page 286).

Orthodox religion did not receive a series of body blows as a
result of Darwin's publications but religious interpretations were
changing; Colenso was excommunicated by his Archbishop; Ecce
Homo was described as "the most pestilential book ever vomited
from the jaws of hell,' and you have already been apprised of Bishop
Wilberforce's opinion of Darwin's work.

In addition to research and publications in geology and the
natural sciences which occurred after 1859, the specific (yet
generalizing) discipline of "Anthropology" was also changing.
Although the term anthropology itself (a combination of
Anthropos + logos) appeared as early as 1573 (and
please Urbanowicz 1992, "Four Field Comentary" in Anthropology
Newsletter, Vol. 3, No 9, page 3 ) in a work by Magnus Hundt, the
following should be noted (from a 1964 publication):

"Anthropology existed before Darwin, but he provided it
with its central theme. Meanwhile some anthropologists, jurists,
historians, and philosophers did not wait for [the 1871]
Descent of Man to act on the cue that Darwin had given them
in the Origin [of 1859], and the following pioneer
studies in evolutionary cultural anthropology reflect the effect
of his work: Sir Henry Maine's Ancient Laws (1861), N. D.
Fustel de Coulange's La cite antique (1865), J. F.
MacLennan's Primitive Marriage (1865), Sir Edward Tylor's
Researches into the Primitive History of Mankind (1865),
Sir John Lubbock's aOrigins of Civilization and the Primitive
Condition of Man (1870), all of which were published after the
first edition of the Origin in 1859 and before the
Descent of Man in 1871" (Gavin De Beer, 1964, Charles
Darwin: Evolution By Natural Selection, page 217).

Information on "non-Western" individuals and cultures came in at a
rapid pace in both the 18th and 19th centuries: from the Pacific, we
received the early ethnographic accounts from Captain James Cook
(1728-1779) and in the Valley of the Neander, in Germany, prior to
Origin, a fossil skull was found. In 1861, Charles Etienne Brasseur
de Bourbourg published his edition of Popul Vuh: Le Livre Sacre et
des mythes de l'antiquite americaine, and this excited the
scholarly world about Mesoamerican civilization. Research from
individuals all over the globe was being distributed and discussed at
a record-breaking pace and the science of anthropology was expanding!
Remember that the fossilized remains of what would eventually be
called "Neanderthal" were actually discovered in Germany in 1856,
prior to publication of Origin. Fossil finds were being discovered an
interpreted by intelligent individuals of the day and in 1863 Thomas
Huxley published his own book entitled Man's Place In Nature
and this also had a tremendous impact on the intellectual climate of
the times:

"Though Huxley's book was not universally admired, it was
widely influential because of its clarity, brevity, and
focus--three attributes rarely allotted to Darwin's
[Origin] book. Man's Place In Nature is often cited as the
beginning of physical anthropology, which encompasses the study of
bodily variation and evolution of humans. Yet Huxley's book
would have been robbed of significance, then as now, without the
broader theoretical context already established by Darwin"
[STRESS added] (Pat Shipman, 1994, The Evolution Of
Racism: Human Differences And The Use And Abuse Of Science,
page 67).

Certain intellectual events are cumulative and we are all products
of our times, a point that I tried to make in the beginning of this
paper when I wrote that Darwin was just as human as the writer (and
reader) of this paper, burdened with all of the biases and paradoxes
of the times and limited by the known (and unknown) information of
the times. This is certainly a simpler phrase, I believe, than what
may be viewed as a "reflexive" statement made by Rosemary Jann in
writing about "Darwin And The Anthropologists: Sexual Selection And
Its Discontents" in 1994:

"By recognizing the way our own ideological assumptions
help to write the narratives that explain order in our world--and
our interpretations of those written in the past--we can perhaps
begin to take more responsibility for the role we play in
constructing that order in the first place" (Rosemary Jann, 1994,
"Darwin And The Anthropologists: Sexual Selection And Its
Discontents" in Victorian Studies, Vol. 37, No. 2, pages
287-306, page 304).

This is certainly what Levine meant when he quoted Robert Young's
1985 publication entitled Darwin's Metaphor: Nature's Place In
Victorian Culture; in 1987, Levine reiterated the following: "At
the heart of a science we find a culture's values" (George Levine,
1987, "Darwin Among The Critics" in Victorian Studies, Vol.
37, No. 2, pages 253-260, page 260).

SELECTIVE INTERPRETATIONS AGAIN

When this paper was presented in the "first person" on October 4,
1990 (with the speaker in costume and character of Darwin) a question
was raised from the audience as to "why did you (Urbanowicz) place so
much emphasis on Darwin's use of the term Creator" in his writings?"
The answer given then was the same one I hold today: at times, people
discuss Darwin without ever having read Darwin or if they have read
something by Darwin, "they" interpret his writings for their own
purposes. Darwin wrote of a "Creator" and was not an atheist. Charles
Darwin also wrote with clarity and he presented a tremendous amount
of information over numerous years and he also re-wrote numerous
items, resulting in the six editions of Origin in his
lifetime.

Earlier in this paper reference was made to Stephen J. Gould's
1993 selective quotation from Darwin as well as a 1982 "interview"
which included a quotation in reference to Darwin's Origin,
without reference to the Creator. This current electronic version of
a traditional "paper" was completed in September 1996 and virtually
everything I read indicates a debate concerning Darwin (and his ideas
as expressed in his writings) still continues and selective
interpretations still continue. I must also admit, that in beginning
to read Gould's 1995 publication entitled Dinosaur In A Haystack:
Reflections In Natural History, I am still somewhat dismayed to
see Gould quoting from Darwin's Origin and, for some reason,
choosing to omit Darwin's obvious reference to "the Creator" in
editions two through six. (See Stephen J. Gould, 1995, Dinosaur In
A Haystack: Reflections In Natural History, page 37).

The social sciences, including "anthropology" are not a "hard
science" like physics and chemistry, because the social sciences are
not as cumulative as the hard sciences. Within anthropology, or
"story-telling" in general, individuals select what to include in
their writings and these selections may often be skewed, for one
reason or another, as the earlier Gould quote illustrated. Consider,
if you will, the 1994 collection of essays entitled Evidence of
Purpose: Scientists Discover Creativity which includes several
references to Darwin's Origin from several contributors.
Consider the words of Owen Gingerich, described as a "professor of
astronomy and the history of science at Harvard University, and a
senior astronomer at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory."
Gingerich's chapter is entitled "Dare A Scientist Believe In Design"
and he cites a 1990 statement by "the evolutionary biologist and
historian of science William B. Provine, who has recently written"
the following:

"When Darwin deduced the theory of natural selection to
explain the adaptations in which he had previously seen the
handiwork of God, he knew that he was committing cultural
murder. He understood immediately that if natural selection
explained adaptations, and evolution by descent were true, then
the argument from design was dead and all that went with it,
namely the existence of a personal god, free will, life after
death, immutable moral laws, and ultimate meaning in life. The
immediate reactions to Darwin's On the Origin of Species
exhibit, in addition to favorable and admiring responses from a
relatively few scientists, an understandable fear and disgust
that has never disappeared from Western culture"
[stress added] (Owen Gingerich, 1994, "Dare A
Scientist Believe In Design" in Evidence of Purpose: Scientists
Discover Creativity, pages 21-32, page 30).

One should wonder how much "projection" is taking place in this
interpretation of Darwin and the "fear and disgust" mentioned?
I would also argue that many more than a "relatively few
scientists" viewed Origin in a favorable light, not to mention
the intelligent public! I am definitely not sure what the statement
"cultural murder" refers to and as for doing away with "the existence
of a personal god" I must once again refer the reader of this paper
to Darwin writing of a "God of Nature" in his 1839 The Voyage of
the Beagle and then the "Creator" that Darwin mentioned in the
second edition (and all subsequent editions of Origin in his
lifetime):

"Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the
most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely,
the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is a
grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having
been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or
into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on
according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning
endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are
being evolved" [stress added]. [Chapter XV:
"Recapitulation And Conclusion"]

For some who only reads the Gingerich chapter without being aware
of the "real" words of Charles Darwin, one gets a "different" (i.e.,
WRONG) interpretation of Charles Darwin! In another chapter
entitled "A Potent Universe" by John Polkinghorne, "elected the chair
of mathematical physics at Cambridge University in 1968," the author
cites Darwin, but does not inform the reader that this came from the
oft-criticized Origin:

"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several
powers having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few
forms or into one; and that ... [these "..." are exactly as
Polkinghorne has them] from so simple a beginning endless
forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being
evolved" (John Polkinghorne, 1994, "The Potent Universe"
Evidence of Purpose: Scientists Discover Creativity, pages
105-115, page 106).

The reader who has earlier read of "cultural murder" as a result
of the Origin might now think this was a death-bed statement
or a recanting statement by Darwin, not something which appeared in
the Origin! The contributors to that particular volume have
their opinions, I have mine, and you must make up your own mind on
Darwin. You must also make up your own mind on everything![5]

ENDING REMARKS

Why do scientists or authors or anthropologists write and
communicate as they do? In 1974, Howard Gruber published a 260+ page
book entitled Darwin On Man: A Psychological Study of
Creativity. The first edition had an important introduction by
Jean Piaget [1896-1980] wherein he mentioned the "reflective
process" necessary for thinking and how new ideas are created. Gruber
can not be paraphrased in a few lines, but I do appreciate his
closing words to the volume:

"Each person makes a different set of decisions about
the use of his [or her] personal resources, thereby
setting the scene for the fortunate accidents of thought that
occur and choosing among them when they do. Thus, Darwin could
notice behavioral variations in pigeons and use them in a theory
of the evolution of mind because he was at once the pigeon
fancier, the evolutionist, and the materialist."

"The fact that he was all these things at once meant that a
unique and productive intersection of many enterprises could occur
in his thinking. At the same time, the existence of this ensemble
was not an accident but the deliberately cultivated fruit of
Darwin's work. He organized his life in order to construct a new
point of view, one that would deal with adaptation in a changing
world without any recourse to supernatural forces."

"In his [or her, I must add] exploration of the
world, the individual finds out what needs doing. In his attempts
to do some of it, he finds out what needs doing. In his attempts
to do some of it, he finds out what he can do and what he cannot.
He also comes to see what he need not do. From the
intersection of these possibilities there emerges a new
imperative, his sense of what he must do. How "It needs" and "I
can" give birth to "I must" remains enigmatic [ALL
STRESS added]" (Howard E. Gruber, 1974, 1981 2nd edition,
Darwin On Man: A Psychological Study of Creativity, page
257)

Darwin was indeed fortunate in many respects and Peter Brent made
an interesting comment on Darwin in his 1981 publication, Charles
Darwin: A Man of Enlarged Curiosity, describing him as an
intellectual and pointing out that he had neither a prescribed social
rôle nor an on-going working position: Darwin simply applied
himself to those problems which he found intriguing. Darwin was not a
dilettante aristocrat, and he "was not an academic, established by
title upon the intellectual scene" (Peter Brent, 1981, Charles
Darwin: A Man of Enlarged Curiosity, page 335). There was never a
personnel committee Darwin had to sit upon nor an academic affairs
committee to meet with to justify his somewhat unorthodox ideas! As
the distinguished George Gaylord Simpson wrote in 1982, in the volume
entitled (perhaps somewhat facetiously, or for the purchasing public
in mind) The Book Of Darwin:

"Almost all humans meditate on the nature of the world in
which they live, on their place in it and on their relationships
to it. That may be the most distinct characteristic of Homo
sapiens as compared with other species. ... This book
[Simpson wrote, and I say this paper] is partly by and
partly about Charles Darwin, one of those exceptional persons who
have revolutionized both the scientific and the philosophical
aspects of thought about those matters" (George Gaylord Simpson,
1982, The Book Of Darwin, page 13).

How should one remember Charles Robert Darwin? He has been
described in a contemporary encyclopedia as "an affectionate husband
and father . . . and a steadfast friend to several eminent
scientists" of his time (Ralph Colp, Jr., 1988, Darwin, Robert
Charles (1809-1882)" in Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia,
edited by Sally Mitchell, pp. 208-210, page 209). Emma Darwin once
described him as "the most transparent man" she ever saw and Darwin
wrote a note to himself, wherein he carefully weighed the pro's &
cons of marriage and he ended the note with the following: "Marry -
Marry - Marry Q.E.D." The words that Charles Darwin wrote to Emma in
a letter nine days before they were married in 1839 held true for all
of their years: "I think you will humanize me, and soon teach me
there is greater happiness than building theories and accumulating
facts in silence and solitude" (C. Darwin to Emma , dated Jan 20th
1839 in More Letters of Charles Darwin: A Record of His Work In A
Series of Hitherto Unpublished Letters, Francis Darwin, Editor,
1903, page 29).

Emma Darwin was a very religious woman: she attended church on a
regular basis and one of their daughters wrote that in Emma's youth
"religion must have largely filled her life, and there is evidence in
the papers she left that it distressed her in her early married life
to know" that Charles Darwin did not share her faith (Nora Barlow,
1958, Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809-1882, page 239).
Emma expressed her concerns to her husband and in a letter she sent
his shortly after they were married in 1839, Emma wrote that
"everything that concerns you concerns me and I should be most
unhappy if I thought we did not belong to each other forever." It was
a known fact that Darwin was deeply moved by this and Emma found her
letter to Charles among his notes after he died and she read his
following words: "When I am dead, know that many times, I have kissed
and cryed over this" (Nora Barlow, 1958, Autobiography of Charles
Darwin 1809-1882, page 237).

As Emma Darwin and Charles Darwin grew older, so did their
children: William became a wealthy banker, Horace an engineer, and
George went into astronomy. One day, simply because there was no
holding back the passage of time, Darwin recalled that the boys
decided that they were too old to call him "Papa" anymore and would
call me "Father" instead and he wrote that "I would sooner be called
Dog" but time does serve as a great equalizer (Walter Karp, 1968,
Charles Darwin And The Origin Of Species, page 139). When
Darwin had his final and fatal heart attack on the 19th of April
1882, he made no deathbed statement as to his faith, but had he been
asked the question by someone: "Darwin, have you made peace with
God?" perhaps he would have chosen to respond with the words
attributed to Thoreau on his deathbed, who is said to have responded
to that question as follows: "I didn't know we had quarreled" (Huston
Smith, 1958, The Religions of Man, page 328). After Darwin's
death, perhaps it was his daughter who summarized his life the
best:

"My first remembrances of my father are of the delights
of his playing with us. He was passionately attached to his own
children, although he was not an indiscriminate child-lover. ...
He cared for all our pursuits and interests, and lived our lives
with us in a way that very few fathers do. But I am certain that
none of us felt that this intimacy interfered the least with our
respect and obedience. ... Another characteristic of his treatment
of his children was his respect for their liberty, and for their
personality. Our father and mother would not even wish to know
what we were doing or thinking unless we wished to tell. He always
made us feel that we were each of us creatures whose opinions and
thoughts were valuable to him, so that whatever there was best in
us came out in the sunshine of his presence" (Francis Darwin,
1950, Charles Darwin's Autobiography: With His Notes And
Letters Depicting The Growth of The Origin of Species, pp.
96-98).

This is an honored way to be remembered and it has been verified
by professional colleagues as well:

"Charles Darwin, whose life spanned much of the
nineteenth century, is the most influential biologist to have
lived. Not only did he change the course of biological science but
he changed for ever how philosophers and theologians conceive of
man's place in nature. An outstanding scientist who excelled first
as an observer and later as a theorist and experimenter, he was
also a singularly attractive character beloved by family and
colleagues alike" (John Bowlby, 1990, Charles Darwin: A New
Life, page 1).

Darwin was a prolific writer and it has been estimated that in his
lifetime, he published some "seven thousand pages, about three
million words" (John Bowlby, 1990, Charles Darwin: A New Life,
page 5). This is impressive, is it not? Darwin was never a teacher,
per se, and he had no legions of graduates or undergraduate students
to listen to his presentations. However, should Darwin have been
fortunate enough to be in any classroom, I think he would have wished
to convey the vital importance of individuals finding their own
patterns in the data, looking for the patterns of nature or for the
patterns of human behavior. Someone once wrote about a leading 20th
century Californian, Frank Oppenheimer of the San Francisco
Exploratorium: "Letting people find the patterns in nature,
Oppenheimer believed, empowered them and helped them make informed
decisions in an increasingly technical age." If our world is not
knowable, it is "at least understandable" (as cited by Gerald George
in a book review of The Exploratorium: The Museum As
Laboratory, by Hild Hein [1990] in The San Francisco
Chronicle Review, July 15, 1990, page 11).

Thomas Huxley wrote Darwin's obituary for the April 27, 1882 issue
of Nature (London). In addition to pointing out many things
about Darwin, Huxley ended by writing that the words applied to
Socrates "Apology" are appropriate for Charles Darwin and as Huxley
wrote the words ring:

"...in our ears as if it were Charles Darwin's
farewell:--'The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our
ways--I to die and you to live. Which is the better, God only
knows.'" (Thomas H. Huxley, 1986, "Charles Darwin" in
Darwiniana Essays, pages 244-247, page 247).

# # #

EPILOGUE: C. F. URBANOWICZ

The idea to present Darwin in the first person on October 4, 1990,
make a 70 minute videotape in February 1993, and again portray
Charles Darwin for several houra for another videotape series in
April 1996, was not an original idea. (The April 1996 videotapes are
being edited this year by Ms. Donna Crowe of the Instructional Media
Center at California State University, Chico.) Years ago I came
across a 1975 book by UC Berkeley Professor of Zoology Richard M.
Eakin entitled Great Scientists Speak Again. Darwin, as well
as Mendel, Pasteur (1822-1895), and several others were portrayed by
Eakin for his Zoology 10 class. You are invited to consult his volume
to compare his Darwin with my Darwin. Charles R. Darwin was an
interesting individual and it is wonderful to read about his
influence in so many areas; one intriguing parallel concerned John
Muir (1838-1914), of Yosemite fame, and Charles Darwin:

"In 1837, at the age of twenty-eight, Darwin jotted in
his notes, 'animals . . . may partake of our origin in one common
ancestor--we may all be melted together.' At twenty-nine, Muir
left home to explore the natural world and eventually to express
himself even more expansively: 'When we try to pick out anything
by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.'
Yosemite became to Muir what the Galapagos Islands were to
Darwin: a place where personal experience and visionary thought
came together to influence broader concepts pursued for decades
thereafter in other parts of the world. Both men looked closely at
the primordial struggle for existence long observed by others;
both saw not something life-threatening and destructive, but a
creative, life-giving process. Darwin liberated biologists
from looking at a species a fixed entities. Muir freed first
himself, then generations of his disciples, from the venerated
tradition of adapting land to human needs, urging instead a new
ethic of adapting human behavior toward preserving the natural
state of the earth" [STRESS added] (Galen Rowell
[Editor], 1989, The Yosemite [The original John
Muir text], page 19.

Finally, two final statements for this paper: one has already been
used, but it is still quite appropriate:

"Darwin taught us all to see more clearly what everyone
had seen, and Darwin also taught us to think, along with him, what
no one else had thought. No branch of science is more dominated by
a single theory, by a single great idea, than is the whole of
biology by the idea of evolution by Natural Selection" (J.
Livingston and L. Sinclair, 1967, Darwin And The Galapagos,
n.p.).

The second closing comment comes from my "inspiration" to perform
as Darwin, in costume, in October 1990 and I cite the words of
Richard M. Eakin who is making a statement as Charles Darwin:

"If I had any advice to you it is just this: love science
but do not worship it. Put science in its proper place, ranking it
along with philosophy and history, music and religion, literature
and art. If I had my life to live again [Darwin says], I
would make it a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music
at least once every week" (Richard M. Eakin, 1975, Great
Scientists Speak Again, page 107).

# # #

SPECIFIC REFERENCES CITED:

"Read not to contradict and confute;
nor to believe and take for granted;
nor to find talk and discourse;
but to weigh and consider.

Some books are to be tasted,
others to be swallowed,
and some few to be chewed and digested;
that is, some books are to be read only in parts;
others to be read but not curiously;
and some to be read wholly,
and with diligence and attention."
Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English essayist and philosopher.

"Only beginners are awed by their ability to collate monumental
bibliographies which the readers of the original articles rarely
consult anyway." (Hans Seyle, 1964, From Dream To
Discovery, page 344.)

Urbanowicz, Charles F., 1994a, The Gaming Heritage: A Natural For
Some And Problems For Others? (Presented at the 53rd Annual Meeting
of the Society For Applied Anthropology, Cancún, Mexico, April
13-17)

[2] In the 1990s, I honestly
believe that what we currently suffer from is not the "feeling" that
"change" is occuring too rapidly BUT we fail to make changes in our
interpretations of change. I believe that "change is a constant" but
our abilities to deal with change can fall further and further
behind. Unless we work at keeping our interpretations current and
flexible, we can fall into a situation of the "hardening of the
categories." To return to the paper after this footnote #2,
please click here.

[3] At the time this item was placed
on the World Wide Web, the text of The Voyage of the Beagle
could be found by clicking
here. To return to the paper after this footnote #3, please click
here.

[4] As with footnote #3 just above,
at the time this item was placed on the World Wide Web, the text of
On The Origin Of Species.... could be found by clicking
here. To return to the paper after this footnote #4, please click
here.

[5] The debate obviously goes on,
witness the legislative discussions in the State of Tennessee in
March 1996, under newspaper headlines of "Scopes Trial Revisted"
(Chico Enterprise-Record, March 5, 1996, page 1) and as fate
would have it, Inherit
The Wind was being performed on my University campus in March
1996 and I was able to play the role of Dr. Amos D. Keller, one of
the "agnostic scientists" called for the defense! Finally, keeping up
with the "Darwin Industry" can be an exceptionally rewarding
full-time job in-and-of-itself! In addition to the excellent
DARWIN-L, since writing the
bulk of this paper several years ago, I have also come across the
following publications (which I have yet to fully incorporate into my
version of Darwin's life): these are Arnold C. Brackman, 1980, A
Delicate Arrangement: The Strange Case of Charles Darwin And Alfred
Russel Wallace; Janet Brow, 1995, Charles Darwin: Voyaging
Voilume I Of A Biography; Frederick Burkhardt [Editor],
1996, Charles Darwin's Letters: A Selection 1825-1859;
Benjamin Farrington, 1982, What Darwin Really Said; James
Moore, 1994, The Darwin Legend; Fred Wilson, 1991,
Empiricism and Darwin's Science, and Michael White and John
Gribbin, 1995, Darwin: A Life In Science. Clearly, Darwin
continues to be popular and, as written above, I look forward
to the year 2009! One caveat: about the WWW paper is in order:
it is not "perfect" and there are some "stylistic" inconsistencies in
the references cited; I have, however, had numerous requests by
students to get this on the Web and hence, this version. As time
permits, however, I shall "clean up" the "References Cited" and
these mea culpa sentences shall disappear! One additional
mention must be made of The Chico Anthropological Society
Papers, Edited by Ms. Tracy Hokaj and Mr. Kevin F. Weherly
(Number 16, Fall 1996) published by the Department of Anthropology at
California State University, Chico: in this publication, a "modified"
version of this paper appears (pages 55-114) as well as six excellent
papers from some of the participants from the Spring 1995 ANTH
303 Seminar. This publication is available from the Department of
Anthropology at a cost of $US8.00. To return to the paper after this
footnote #5, and the "Ending Remarks," please click here.